By default, every notification Essential Support sends — ticket updates, confirmation links, digests — comes from Essential Support’s own sending address. Connect your own SendGrid or Mailgun account and Essential Support sends through it instead, so customers see mail arriving from your domain.
Where to find it
This option lives under Settings → Branding → Custom domain, in a section called Email sending below the domain settings on that same page — not under Channels, even though it changes how customers experience your email notifications.
Connect a provider
- Click the gear icon, then in the left-hand Settings navigation choose Branding, then open the Custom domain sub-tab, and scroll down to Email sending.
- Set the Provider dropdown to SendGrid or Mailgun. Leave it on Essential Support (default) to keep using the built-in sender.
- Paste your provider’s API key into the API key field. Once a key is saved, a “saved” chip appears next to the label and the field’s placeholder changes to “•••••••• (leave blank to keep)” — you only need to re-enter it when you actually want to replace it, not every time you edit another field.
- Enter the From address you want notifications to come from, e.g.
support@yourcompany.com. This address must already be verified as a sender in your SendGrid account, or on a domain you’ve verified in Mailgun — Essential Support does not verify it for you, and saving will fail with “A valid, provider-verified From address is required” if it’s left blank or invalid. - If you chose Mailgun, also fill in Mailgun sending domain (e.g.
mg.yourcompany.com). Mailgun requires this in addition to the From address — saving fails with “Mailgun requires a sending domain” if you leave it blank. SendGrid does not show this field. - Click Save.
Test before you rely on it
- Once a provider and key are saved, a Send a test email field and Send test button appear below the form.
- Enter an address you can check and click Send test.
- Essential Support sends a real message through your provider and reports success, or the exact error your provider returned (e.g. an unverified sender). Fix issues in your provider’s account rather than in Essential Support — the key, domain, and From address are simply passed through to your account as-is.
What this changes — and what it doesn’t
- It applies to all outbound notification email from this workspace — ticket-update emails, magic sign-in and ticket-verify links, and digests — not just one kind of message.
- It does not affect email intake. Your
es_in_…@in.essential.supportingest address and its forwarding rule (see “Turn emails into tickets”) are completely separate and unaffected by this setting. - Setting Provider back to Essential Support (default) and clicking Use default (the Save button’s label when no provider is selected) removes your stored key entirely and reverts to the platform sender immediately.
Edge cases
- Switching provider (e.g. from SendGrid to Mailgun) requires re-entering an API key even if one was already saved for the previous provider — keys aren’t shared between providers.
- An invalid or revoked key isn’t caught when you save — there’s no live validation. It only surfaces when you send the test email or when a real notification fails to go out, so send a test immediately after connecting a new key.
Related: Turn emails into tickets (email intake).