Connect your inbox
ForgeSend sends every campaign email through an inbox you connect yourself — never a shared sending pool. Connecting your first inbox is Step 1 of the get-started checklist and the fastest way to unblock everything else, since campaigns can't launch without at least one connected, healthy inbox.
On this page
Business email only
ForgeSend rejects personal email domains — Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook.com, iCloud, and similar — for every connection method, whether you're going through Google OAuth, Microsoft OAuth, or a manual SMTP form. There's no way around it by switching methods.
If you try to connect a personal-domain address, ForgeSend blocks it with: "Please use a business email address — ForgeSend is built for sending from a domain you control, which protects your deliverability and keeps your outreach looking credible. Connect a Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, or custom domain inbox instead."
The Inboxes page
Open Inboxes in the sidebar. On desktop, the connect panel is a persistent left column next to a card grid of anything already connected — the panel doesn't need to be opened or toggled, it's just there. On narrower screens it collapses to an Add sending identity trigger you tap to expand it.
Add sending identity
Connect a new mailbox to this workspace.
Google Workspace
Connect Gmail or Google Workspace with OAuth.
Microsoft 365 / Outlook
Connect Outlook or M365 with OAuth.
SMTP / Manual
SMTP credentials, optional IMAP reply sync.
No inboxes connected
This is the account your campaigns actually send from. Connect one on the left — OAuth takes under a minute.
Google Workspace or Microsoft 365
Both OAuth providers work the same way: picking the provider card, then clicking its connect button, submits a real form post to ForgeSend's backend, which redirects your whole browser tab into the provider's consent screen — it's a full-page redirect, not a popup, and not a background API call. Grant the requested permissions and you're bounced back to the Inboxes page with the new inbox showing Connected.
Connect Google Workspace
Connect Gmail or Google Workspace with OAuth.
Continue to GoogleFor the exact Google/Microsoft scopes requested, the "app isn't verified" notice you may see mid-beta, and how reconnecting a broken OAuth token works, see Connecting an inbox in the Inboxes section.
SMTP / Manual
For any provider that isn't Google or Microsoft — Zoho, a cPanel-hosted mailbox, AWS SES SMTP, and so on — the SMTP tab is a two-step form: pick a preset, then fill in credentials.
Step 1 — Choose your email provider
Step 2 — Enter your credentials
From email
Display name
SMTP username
App password
Fetch replies via IMAP
Gmail and Yahoo are deliberately absent from the preset list — both are personal free-email domains, and the same rejection described above applies. cPanel / Fasthost and Other / Custom leave the host, port, and security fields blank for manual entry; the other presets prefill them. Checking Fetch replies via IMAP reveals separate IMAP host/port/security/username/password fields — a mailbox can send via SMTP without ever configuring reply fetching.
Test verifies your credentials without saving anything; Save Inbox re-verifies and then saves — it won't save an inbox that fails verification.
Use port 465 (SSL/TLS) where your provider offers it. Port 587 (STARTTLS) can be blocked outbound on some VPS providers — if 465 isn't available, select STARTTLS explicitly rather than assuming the default will work.
After connecting
Whichever method you used, the new inbox now shows up as its own card in the grid, with its provider, a status pill, a health chip, and a daily-send usage bar.
New inboxes default to a 50-per-day send limit — click the card to open its detail slide-over, where the limit, signature, and reconnect/disconnect controls all live. Health is a real computed score, not a static label — it starts high and only drops if the inbox errors out, its OAuth token fails to refresh, or its recent send failure rate climbs once it has enough sends to measure. Healthy (≥80), Degraded (≥60), At risk (≥40), and Blocked (below 40) are the four labels you'll see.
Where to go next
Next: Your first campaign