Understanding Email Management | Zoho Creator Help

Understanding Email Management

Notes This help page is for users in Creator 6. If you are in the older version (Creator 5), click here. Know your Creator  version.

1. Overview

Email Management lets you configure the email channel used for outgoing emails from your applications, define verified sender addresses, and authenticate domains to improve deliverability and help recipient email servers recognize them as legitimate. 
Email Management includes two main areas that can be configured to customize how emails are sent from your application.
  1. Outgoing Email Channels - These channels define the service through which your Creator applications send emails. Creator offers multiple email delivery options:
    1. Creator Built-in – Ready to use with no configuration required.
    2. ZeptoMail – Zoho's dedicated transactional email service.
    3. Third-party ESPs – External email service providers such as Gmail and Microsoft Outlook.
    4. Custom SMTP – Connect your own email infrastructure for full control over delivery.
      Learn how to configure email channels
  2. Sender Emails - Sender emails are the "From" addresses that recipients see when they receive an email from your application. You can add and verify sender addresses to ensure your emails are sent from recognized addresses. Additional configuration may be required depending on the active email channel. For example, sender addresses may need to be added as aliases or verified within the connected email service. Learn how to configure sender emails

1.1 Email Delivery Flow

Zoho Creator sends outgoing emails through the email channel configured for your account. By default, the Built-in Email channel is active, but you can switch to another supported email channel depending on your requirements. Each channel requires setup before it can be used. Once a channel is configured and activated, outgoing emails will be sent from the sender email addresses.
Sender email addresses must first be added in the Sender Email tab in Creator. Once added, next steps vary by channel: authenticate the domain for Built-in Email, verify it in ZeptoMail during integration setup, or add the address as an alias in your Gmail or Microsoft Outlook account or SMTP server.
Info: An alias email is an additional address linked to your primary account that lets you send emails from a different address without creating a separate account. 
These email settings apply to all outgoing emails triggered from your Creator account, including the contexts listed in the sections below.
  1. Send email action in workflows: Triggers customized emails configured as actions across form workflows, schedules, approvals, and payment workflows.
  2. Send mail task in Deluge: Triggers an email to specified recipients with attachments such as filtered reports, file upload field values, record templates, and more.
  3. Email notification on form submission: Sends an email notification to users when they submit an entry through a form automatically.
  4. Email notifications in portals (Built-in Email channel only): Sends OTPs, updates, and notifications to portal users using sender emails configured as From and Reply-to addresses, keeping them informed on their access or activity.

2. Navigation guide

In the Creator's admin dashboard, selecting Operations under MANAGE in the left pane displays various management features for Solutions.
Selecting Email Management under Applications opens its dashboard with the Outgoing Email Channels and Sender Email tabs.

3. Outgoing Email Channels

Outgoing email channels define the email service used to deliver outgoing emails from your Creator account. Depending on your needs, you can use built-in service, connect with external providers, or configure custom servers.
Notes
Note: Only one channel can be active at a time, and all outgoing emails are routed through it.  

Channel
Description
Built-in Email
Use Creator's Built-in Email service to send outgoing emails without any additional configuration. You can verify sender email addresses and authenticate domains to improve email deliverability while using the built-in service.
This is suitable for getting started quickly with application, portal notifications and workflow emails.
ZeptoMail
Configure ZeptoMail as the email channel to send high-volume transactional emails. Includes email tracking, delivery logs, webhook notifications, and bounce address management for greater visibility and control over email performance.
Notes
Note: Sender email addresses import as unverified if the domain has DMARC enabled or if DMARC was disabled during verification. Enabling them in ZeptoMail requires the domain to be verified in ZeptoMail. Addresses added after integration follow the same requirement, and must also be added in ZeptoMail if Sender Email Configuration is enabled.
This is suitable for organizations that require scalable and reliable transactional email delivery.
  1. Microsoft Outlook
  2. Gmail
Send outgoing emails through your email providers using OAuth2 authentication. Alias addresses must be configured as the sender before use. Learn how to add the sender email addresses as an alias mail in Gmail or Microsoft Outlook.

This is suitable for organizations that prefer using existing Microsoft Outlook or Gmail accounts for operational communication.
Custom SMTP
Connect any external mail server using SMTP to send outgoing emails, including your own email infrastructure or third-party providers. Supports None, Basic, and OAuth2 authentication methods.

This is best suited for organizations that operate their own mail infrastructure or require routing through a specific SMTP server not available as a outgoing email channel in Creator.

3.1. Built-in Email Channel

The Built-in Email channel is Zoho Creator's native email service for sending outgoing emails. Emails sent through this channel are routed through Zoho Creator's shared domain (notifications@mailer.zohocreatormail.com for paid accounts and notifications@trial.zohocreatormail.com for trial accounts) unless the sender's domain is authenticated.

To ensure emails are sent from your own domain address and are recognized by recipient servers, you can configure custom domain authentication. Note that even if a sender email address is specified, emails will be routed through Creator's shared domain until the corresponding domain is authenticated.

When set as the active channel, authenticating sender domains is recommended to improve deliverability and ensure emails are sent using your organization's domain identity.

Domain Authentication
Without authentication, emails risk landing in spam regardless of their content or sender legitimacy. Domain authentication lets a recipient's email service provider confirm that an email originates from a legitimate source, protecting senders and recipients from spam, forgery, and phishing while improving inbox deliverability.

Every time you add a sender email address to your Zoho Creator account, its domain is automatically listed in the Built-in Email channel with a Pending Authentication status. To complete authentication, configure the SPF and DKIM records for the domain. These two records serve distinct verification roles:
  1. SPF: Verifies that the email was sent from a trusted service and that the sender details have not been modified.
  2. DKIM: Validates that the email was generated from an authorized service configured by the sender domain's administrator.

4. Sender Email

Sender Email in Zoho Creator refers to the 'From' address used in the outgoing emails sent from your Creator applications. Other than the super admin's email address or the logged-in user's email address, you can have a different personalized email address to send mail from your Zoho Creator app. You can add these custom email addresses from Sender Email tab. Following a verification procedure, your custom email addresses will be made available for sending emails from your app.

5. Use case

Zylker Hospital sends emails to patients for appointments, lab reports, billing, and support, all from a single address: notifications@zylkerhospital.com. This makes it hard for patients to identify the sending department, and the generic address reduces brand credibility.

With Email Management, Zylker configures dedicated sender addresses like appointments@zylkerhospital.com and billing@zylkerhospital.com, mapped to the relevant workflows and Deluge scripts. High-volume transactional emails like appointment confirmations can be routed through ZeptoMail by setting it as the active email channel. Domain authentication is configured for zylkerhospital.com across all sender addresses to verify sender identity and build patient trust.

6. Points to note 

  1. Only one email channel can be active at a time. Activating a new channel affects all future outgoing emails from the Creator account.
  2. To send emails via ZeptoMail, the domains of all sender email addresses used in email notifications must be authenticated in ZeptoMail.
  3. If a third-party channel or Custom SMTP configuration becomes unauthorized, email notifications will fail.
  4. The Built-in Email is used as a fallback to ensure email delivery continues when the active email channel configuration is deleted.
  5. Sender email addresses added in Creator must be configured as alias emails for the associated mail server account when using Gmail, Outlook, or Custom SMTP channels.
  1. Managing Outgoing Email Channels
  2. Manage sender email addresses