Connector guide
Connect email and SMTP to Google Sheets
Connect any email inbox and your SMTP server to Google Sheets — log inbound IMAP mail to a sheet and send confirmations from your own domain. Make.com, n8n, and Zapier.
How to connect Email & SMTP to Google Sheets
Connecting email and SMTP to Google Sheets covers both directions of the mail-to-spreadsheet problem. On the inbound side, an IMAP trigger watches any mailbox — Outlook, Zoho, Fastmail, cPanel, or a shared support@ alias — and writes each matching message into a sheet: sender, subject, body, received date, and any parsed value like an order number. On the outbound side, an SMTP action sends a real email from your own domain — a receipt, a confirmation, or an internal alert — whenever a new row appears or a webhook fires. Running both together gives you a closed loop: capture the enquiry, log it, and reply, all without opening an inbox or paying a marketing tool's per-send fee. Because the inbound side speaks IMAP rather than one provider's API, it works with role addresses and shared mailboxes that Gmail-only connectors can't reach, and because the outbound side speaks plain SMTP, you can plug in Amazon SES, SendGrid, Mailgun, Brevo, or your host's relay and keep your own deliverability. A built-in filter keeps noise out — only mail matching a sender, subject, or unread rule is captured — and the email body supports merge fields, so every message is personalised with data from the row that triggered it. The workflow runs on Make.com, n8n, or Zapier, so it slots into whatever automation stack you already run.
The exact trigger and action
Trigger
An IMAP "new email" trigger on any mailbox, or a new Google Sheets row / inbound webhook
Action
A Google Sheets "Add a Row" module plus an optional SMTP "Send an Email" action from your own server
Set it up in 5 steps
- 1
Open the email-to-Sheets workflow on Make.com, n8n, or Zapier and add the IMAP "new email" trigger.
- 2
Enter your mailbox host, port, and app password (Outlook, Zoho, Fastmail, cPanel, or any IMAP provider) and set a folder and filter.
- 3
Add the Google Sheets "Add a Row" action and map From, Subject, Body, and Received date to columns; add a text parser if you need to pull an order number or amount out of the body.
- 4
To send a reply, add an SMTP "Send an Email" action with your host, port 587 or 465, username, and password, and write the subject and body using merge fields from the row.
- 5
Send a test email to the mailbox, confirm the row lands and the reply arrives from your domain, then activate.
The outcome
A closed loop over your own mail server: shared-inbox mail is logged the moment it arrives, and confirmations or alerts go back out from your domain — with no marketing-tool fees and no manual copy-paste.
Common use cases
Shared inbox → Sheets tracker
Watches a sales@ or support@ IMAP mailbox and logs every enquiry to a lead tracker the whole team can sort and assign.
New row → SMTP confirmation
When an order or lead lands in the sheet, sends a templated confirmation from your own domain via SES, SendGrid, or your host's relay.
Webhook → Sheets + branded reply
Receives an inbound webhook, appends the payload to a sheet, and sends a branded email over SMTP — replacing a marketing tool's transactional send.
Related templates
Build it on your stack
Frequently asked questions
Do I need Gmail for this?
No — the inbound side uses IMAP, so it works with any mailbox: Outlook, Microsoft 365, Zoho, Fastmail, cPanel mail, and shared role addresses like support@. For Gmail-specific label filtering, use the Connect Gmail to Google Sheets guide instead.
Which SMTP providers can I send through?
Any standard SMTP server — Amazon SES, SendGrid, Mailgun, Brevo, Postmark, Zoho, or your web host's relay. You just need the host, port, username, and password.
Why send over SMTP instead of a Gmail action?
SMTP sends from your own domain and mail server, so you keep your deliverability and avoid Gmail's daily send limits. It's the right choice for transactional email like receipts and confirmations.