Live Chat: emailing a contact from their record

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Live Chat puts an email conversation on the contact themselves. You write from the address you already use, they reply in their own mail client, and both sides of it sit on their record instead of in your inbox.

On Starter the contact record is unchanged — there is no chat panel and no placeholder where one would be.

Turning it on

Go to Integrations → Email → Connect an address. There are two things to fill in:

The email address you send from.
Its password — for most providers, an app password.

That is normally all. When you move out of the address box we look your provider up — first from the domain, and if that is your own domain, from its mail records — and fill the server settings in for you. A business on Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 with its own domain is recognised the same way a gmail.com address is.

The panel tells you what it found, and links straight to the page where that provider issues app passwords.

Most providers want an app password rather than the one you type into their website. In Gmail: Google Account → Security → 2-Step Verification → App passwords. Google displays it in four spaced groups; the spaces do not matter.

If your provider is not recognised

You will be told so plainly, the Server settings section opens, and a best guess at the host names is filled in for you to check. Your host lists the real ones under “email setup” or “mail client settings”: an outgoing SMTP server and an incoming IMAP server.

Those settings are always available under Server settings, recognised provider or not, so anything filled in for you can be corrected before you continue.

Nothing is saved until it works

The details are tested by an actual login before anything is stored. If the password is wrong you find out immediately, rather than the first time a message quietly fails to leave. Stored passwords are encrypted.

Sending without receiving

IMAP is optional. Leave the host blank and you can still send, but replies will land in your normal inbox and will not appear in the conversation. The panel says so rather than showing you a half-empty thread.

Where the conversation appears

Open any contact's full record. The conversation takes the middle of the page, their details tighten into a rail on the left, and work history, notes and activity move into square tabs on the right.

Pick the address to send from, write, and press Enter. Shift+Enter starts a new line. The subject is carried across the thread so replies group together in your contact's mail client instead of arriving as loose messages.

Replies

Connected mailboxes are checked every few minutes, and Check for replies looks straight away.

A reply is filed against a contact only when the sending address matches that contact's address exactly. Nothing is guessed from a display name or a domain, so a message from an address you do not have on file is left alone rather than attached to whoever looks closest.

Who can send

The main account can send from every connected address. A sub-account gets none until you say so: open Who can send on the address in Integrations and tick them.

Reading and sending are separate permissions, so someone can be given the conversation to read without being able to write as your business.

If you cannot send

No address on the contact. The composer says so; add one under Details.
No send-from address shared with you. Ask the main account.
A message shows as not delivered. It stays in the thread with the reason attached, so nothing disappears silently.