Groundbase

Connecting an inbox

Settings → Email integration → Connect account. We connect via standard IMAP + SMTP, which works with virtually every email provider — Gmail, Google Workspace, Outlook / Microsoft 365, Yahoo, iCloud, custom domains via cPanel, anything that speaks IMAP and SMTP.

You'll need:

Why an App Password? Most providers no longer let third-party apps sign in with your normal password — they want a dedicated, revocable token per app.

We encrypt the App Password at rest with AES-GCM (server-side key) so even if our database were dumped, your password isn't readable. Groundbase only decrypts it in memory at send/fetch time.

Sending mail

You can send email from any contact's detail page, from the dedicated Email tab, or via bulk actions on a filtered contact list. The message lands in your normal Sent folder (we append it via IMAP after SMTP send), so the conversation history stays in your real inbox too — read what you sent from Gmail on your phone, edit a thread on the web.

Attachments

Click the paperclip icon in the compose toolbar to attach files. Up to 25 MB total per email across up to 20 files. We encode them as standard multipart/mixed MIME so they arrive as proper attachments in any email client.

(Mobile attachments are photos-only right now — pick from your camera roll. PDF / doc attach from mobile is on the roadmap and needs a separate native picker library.)

Schedule send

Click the clock icon in the compose toolbar, pick a future date and time, and we'll queue the email and send it at that exact moment. A per-minute server cron handles the dispatch — you don't need anything open or running for it to fire.

Scheduled emails show up in your inbox under the Scheduled folder filter. You can cancel any of them before they fire from there.

Limit for now: scheduled sends don't support attachments. Send-with-attachments goes immediately; if you need a scheduled email with files, send to yourself first and forward it manually.

Drafts

Hit Save draft in the compose toolbar to save your in-progress message. Drafts appear under the Drafts folder filter in your inbox — click any draft to resume editing exactly where you left off. Each save is a full update (we PATCH the existing draft, not insert a duplicate). Successful Send auto-deletes the draft.

Email signatures

Edit your signature at Settings → Email integration → Edit (on the connected account) → Signature. HTML allowed — use <br> for line breaks and <a href="…">link</a> for hyperlinks. We auto-derive the plain-text fallback by stripping tags.

Once set, every outbound email from this account (web, mobile, AI integration, workflow auto-sends, cadence steps) automatically appends the signature with the standard -- separator so Gmail / Apple Mail / Outlook recognize it as a sig block and collapse it on reply.

Signatures are per-account so a user with personal + work email can have different sign-offs.

Send-as aliases

If you use multiple sending addresses (e.g. you@brand-a.com and you@brand-b.com from the same Gmail), add them under Settings → Email integration → Send-as addresses. They appear in a dropdown on the compose screen.

Templates

Settings → Templates → Email to create reusable templates with placeholders like {{first_name}}, {{last_name}}, {{full_name}}, {{company}}. The values are filled in per-recipient at send time. The same {{}} syntax works in Sequence email steps and Workflow email actions.

Custom-field merge tags

Beyond the reserved tags above, you can reference any custom field you've created on a Contact via {{cf.<field_key>}}. Example: if you defined a contact custom field with key loan_amount, your template body can say:

Hi {{first_name}}, your loan amount of {{cf.loan_amount}} has been pre-approved.

Custom-field tags are resolved server-side at send time from the recipient's contact record. Missing values render as empty (we don't error or skip the send). The merge-tag picker in the compose dialog lists every custom field you have, so you don't have to memorize keys.

Read receipts (open tracking)

Outbound emails embed a tiny invisible tracking pixel. When the recipient opens the email and their client downloads images, the pixel fires and the email row in Groundbase updates to opened with timestamps. Per-thread you'll see "Read X minutes ago" indicators on the messages you sent.

Read tracking is on by default and can be disabled per-message via the toggle in the compose toolbar (privacy-sensitive sends, internal-team emails, etc.). It can also be disabled globally at Settings → Email integration → Tracking.

Limitations: not all email clients download images on open (notably Apple Mail's "Mail Privacy Protection" preloads pixels so every email appears opened immediately; some corporate gateways strip the pixel). Treat opens as a signal, not gospel.

Click tracking

If your email contains links, Groundbase optionally rewrites each href to route through our tracker first, then redirect to the original destination. We log the click + timestamp on the email row. Like read receipts, click tracking is on by default and toggleable per-message and globally.

The redirect adds ~150ms to the recipient's click. Not noticeable for humans.

Follow-up reminders

When you send an email and want to make sure you don't lose track if they don't reply, click the Set follow-up option in the compose toolbar and pick a number of days. A task is auto-created on the contact for that date — title "Follow up — emailed {subject} on {date}". If the recipient replies before the reminder fires, the task is auto-completed and removed from your queue. If they don't, the task surfaces at the configured time so you remember to nudge.

Disconnecting

Settings → Email integration → Disconnect. Stops fetching new mail and removes the stored credentials. Doesn't delete your already-fetched messages from Groundbase — those stick around for searchability.

Connecting Resend (for email campaigns) — step by step

If you only need transactional email — replies, one-off messages, follow-ups — your IMAP/SMTP connection above handles everything. Resend is for marketing email: bulk campaigns, drip sequences, newsletters. It exists because Gmail and Outlook SMTP rate-limit you hard (usually 500/day on free accounts), and a campaign of any size will get throttled or flagged as spam. Resend is built for outbound at volume, with proper deliverability tooling.

Like Twilio, you bring your own Resend account. Groundbase doesn't mark up Resend usage — Resend charges you direct at their published rates. Free tier is 3,000 emails/month and 100/day, which is enough for most small businesses to start.

Plan ahead. Domain verification — adding DNS records and waiting for them to propagate — takes anywhere from 15 minutes to a few hours. Some DNS providers (notably some registrars' default DNS) can take longer. Don't schedule a campaign before the domain is verified.

Step 1 — Sign up for Resend.

  1. Go to resend.com and create an account.
  2. Free tier: 3,000 emails/month, 100 emails/day, on Resend's own sender domain. That's enough to test, but you'll want to verify your own domain for any real send.
  3. No credit card required to start.

Step 2 — Verify your sending domain.

You'll send from your own domain (e.g. you@yourbusiness.com) — not Resend's. That requires three DNS records: SPF, DKIM, and (recommended) DMARC. All three live in your domain registrar or DNS provider's control panel (Cloudflare, Namecheap, GoDaddy, Route 53, etc.).

In Resend: Domains → Add Domain → enter your domain → Add. Resend shows you the exact records to add. They look like this:

After adding the records in your DNS provider, click Verify in Resend. They poll DNS — if your records are correct, the domain flips to Verified within minutes. If it stays Pending for more than an hour, check that you copied the values exactly (no extra spaces, no extra quotes — some DNS UIs auto-wrap TXT values in quotes which can double them).

Step 3 — Create an API key.

  1. In Resend: API Keys → Create API Key
  2. Name it Groundbase (or whatever you'll recognize later)
  3. Permission: Sending access. Don't grant full access — sending is all Groundbase needs.
  4. Restrict to a specific domain if you'd like (the one you just verified)
  5. Click Add — Resend shows the API key once. Copy it now — they won't show it again.

Step 4 — Connect Resend in Groundbase.

  1. In Groundbase: Settings → Email → Connect Resend
  2. Paste the API key, click Connect
  3. Groundbase verifies the key against Resend and lists your verified sending domains
  4. Pick the default From address (e.g. hello@yourbusiness.com) — you can override this per campaign later

Once connected, the Campaigns surface uses Resend for outbound bulk email. Your existing IMAP/SMTP account is still used for one-to-one replies + inbox reading.

Common gotchas.

Disconnecting Resend

Settings → Email → Disconnect Resend. Stops marketing campaigns from using Resend; your transactional IMAP/SMTP send still works. Re-connect any time with the same or a new API key.