Documentation Communication channels Custom domain email

Channels integration

Custom domain email

Custom domain email integration overview
  • CategoryChannels
  • AuthMail credentials

Overview

For a mailbox on your own domain, pick Custom Domain (Any inbox via IMAP / SMTP) on /channels/email. The IMAP/SMTP form renders inline under the four-provider picker; you fill in the server hostnames, ports and credentials, MessageMind connects, and the mailbox is attached to the shared inbox the AI works from. Works with any provider that speaks standard IMAP for receiving and SMTP for sending.

What MessageMind can do with it

  • Attach any mailbox that speaks IMAP (for receive) and SMTP (for send) to MessageMind through the Custom Domain card, no OAuth required.
  • Add more than one mailbox from the Add inbox tab, so a team can run several custom-domain inboxes side by side under one tenant.
  • Detect form notifications in the body and open the conversation against the submitter rather than the form service's noreply address.
  • Create the submitter as a contact with the mapped fields before the conversation is opened, so Contact Created automations see the full record.
  • Deduplicate the same form submission when the form copies several mailboxes.
  • Fall back to an AI pass for form notifications the deterministic parser cannot read.

Requirements

  • A mailbox on your own domain reachable over IMAP (receive) and SMTP (send).
  • The IMAP hostname and port, the SMTP hostname and port, and the username and password for the mailbox. For hosts that gate IMAP access, you may need to create an app-specific password rather than use the account's main password.
  • The mailbox provider accepts TLS on the configured port (most do by default on 993 for IMAP and 465 or 587 for SMTP).

How to connect

  1. Open MessageMind and go to /channels/email.
  2. On the Connect Email Provider card, pick Custom Domain (Any inbox via IMAP / SMTP).
  3. The IMAP / SMTP form opens inline under the picker. Fill in the IMAP hostname and port and the SMTP hostname and port, plus the mailbox username and password.
  4. Save. MessageMind tests the IMAP login (fetch) and the SMTP login (send) and reports which half failed if the probe refuses the credentials.
  5. The mailbox appears as a tab under the connected inboxes list. To add another custom-domain mailbox, click the Add inbox tab and fill the form again.

Authentication and permissions

Mechanism
IMAP for receive and SMTP for send against your own mail server, with the mailbox username and password sent on standard TLS. No OAuth, no shared app.
Credentials
IMAP host, IMAP port, SMTP host, SMTP port, username and password, stored on your MessageMind tenant. The password is encrypted at rest and sent only over TLS to your mail server.

Available data and actions

Reads

  • Inbound messages from the connected mailbox, including envelope sender, subject, text body and HTML body.
  • Each inbound message's provider id, used to tie the lead ingest row back to the originating email.

Writes

  • A new or updated contact with the submitter's name, email, phone and any other labelled fields the form provided.
  • A conversation thread for the submitter, keyed on the real person rather than on the form service's address.
  • Custom field entries on the contact for every other labelled form field.

AI agent use cases

  • A website form sends to [email protected]; MessageMind opens the conversation with the real customer and files their details against their contact.
  • A Danish or Polish form notification using local-language labels (for example Navn, Telefon, Nadawca) is still read correctly by the generic parser.
  • Table-only HTML form notifications are turned into leads through the AI fallback.

Configuration

  • Owner-specific form handlers can mark incoming leads as contact-only, switch the generic detector off, or decide what happens on a repeat submission.
  • The parser skips labels that describe the notification itself (subject, date, IP address, user agent, referrer, form name, page URL) so form metadata does not land on the contact.
  • Placeholder values such as dashes, N/A, Not specified, TBD and To be confirmed are dropped before being written to the contact.
  • A phone rejected as invalid is retried once with the raw value saved under a Phone Number custom field.

Example workflows

Form notification routed to the real submitter

  1. A website form emails your mailbox from a noreply address with the submitter's details written as labelled lines in the body.
  2. MessageMind reads the labelled lines and extracts the submitter's email, name, phone and the other fields.
  3. The lead is handed to the contact creator, which creates (or merges into) the person with their mapped fields.
  4. The conversation thread is opened against the submitter's address.
  5. A copy of the same submission sent to another mailbox is dropped as a duplicate.

Limitations

  • The connect flow and exact IMAP/SMTP settings are not visible in the researched source files; the researched module only covers the inbound-handling and form-lead detection path.
  • The deterministic form parser needs at least two labelled lines, and a labelled email in the body or a clearly automated sender.
  • The AI fallback only runs for automated-looking senders whose body carries a second address.

Troubleshooting

The connect probe fails on the IMAP half.

The IMAP host or port is wrong, the mailbox refuses the password, or the provider requires an app-specific password rather than the account password. Confirm the hostname and port on your provider's docs (most hosts use port 993 with TLS) and generate an app-specific password if the provider requires one.

The connect probe fails on the SMTP half.

The SMTP host or port is wrong, or the provider blocks SMTP auth on the chosen port. Try port 587 with STARTTLS or 465 with implicit TLS. Some ISPs block port 25 outbound; use your provider's documented submission port.

A form that emails you keeps piling onto the form service's noreply contact.

The body does not carry a labelled Email field and the sender is not clearly automated. Add a labelled Email field in the form notification, or contact support to add an owner-specific handler for that form.

A valid phone from the form is missing on the created contact.

The central creator rejected the phone as invalid for your region; MessageMind keeps the raw value under a Phone Number custom field. Review and fix the formatting on the contact.

Inbound mail stopped arriving after a password change.

The mailbox credentials in /channels/email are out of date. Open the custom-domain mailbox tab, update the password, and save. If the probe passes IMAP and SMTP will resume.

Disconnect and reconnect

  • On /channels/email, pick the custom-domain mailbox tab and click Disconnect. MessageMind clears the stored IMAP/SMTP credentials for that mailbox and shows 'Email disconnected successfully!'.
  • No action is needed on your mail server; the credentials are simply forgotten by MessageMind.
  • To reconnect, pick Custom Domain on /channels/email again and re-enter the IMAP/SMTP settings.