Which email setup should I use?
Last updated: September 9, 2026
Pylon can bring email into your workspace two ways: , by forwarding mail to a Pylon address, or by connecting the mailbox directly. Both work. But which one you should use depends on what kind of address it is — not on which one is faster to click through.
The short version: forward shared inboxes, connect personal ones.
Quick answer
What you're adding | Use | Why |
|---|---|---|
A shared support address — | Forwarding | Shared addresses carry the whole company's volume. The API path gets rate limited; forwarding doesn't. |
Your own work inbox — | Connect the account | One person's volume sits comfortably inside the mail provider's API limits. |
Per-customer aliases — | Forwarding | Same reason, and aliases have no login of their own. |
A mailbox on a customer's domain you've been given access to — | Connect the account, set sync to All emails | You need everything in that mailbox, and each one is low volume. |
Why we recommend forwarding for shared addresses
When you connect a mailbox with the login flow, Pylon reads mail through Google's or Microsoft's API. Those APIs have per-account rate limits. A single person's inbox never comes close to them.
A shared support address is absorbing every inbound customer email your company gets, and every reply on every thread. Run that through the API and you will eventually get rate limited.
Forwarding doesn't touch those APIs. Mail is delivered to Pylon over normal SMTP, the same way any other message reaches any other inbox.
The rule of thumb: if more than one person's mail flows through the address, forward it.
"But support@usepylon.com is a real Gmail account with a password — can't I just log in?"
You can, and the flow will let you. We still recommend forwarding.
Settings
These appear when you connect an account directly.
Which emails do you want synced to Pylon?
Only customer emails (default) — Pylon syncs mail involving an external customer, or sent to one of your connected support addresses. This is the right choice almost always.
All emails — everything inbound except spam and blocked senders. Marked not recommended in the UI, and it is: on a normal work inbox it pulls in a lot of internal noise. The exception is the MSP case, where a mailbox on a customer's domain genuinely is all customer mail.
Create issues from new customer emails
On by default. Turn it off if you want the inbox visible as context on accounts and available to AI Copilot, but don't want it opening issues. Useful for AE and CSM inboxes, where the email is background rather than a support queue.
Allow other Pylon users to reply from the added email
Off by default. When turned on, teammates can reply from this address without being on the original thread.
Common questions
How many addresses can I connect?
As many as you want, and you can mix approaches — forwarded shared addresses alongside directly connected personal inboxes.
We're not on Google or Microsoft.
Use the Forwarding integration and point auto-forwarding at the address Pylon gives you. Everything downstream — issues, replies, routing — behaves identically.
Does forwarding lose anything compared to connecting the account?
For a shared support address, no. Mail arrives, issues are created, and your team replies from Pylon the same way. However, we do not support historical backfill of mail that arrived before you set forwarding up.