Email by Zapier Zapier integrationAutomate Email by Zapier with Zapier.
The Email by Zapier Zapier integration gives you 2 triggers, 1 action and 0 searches. You get a private zapiermail.com inbox that starts automations, a way to send short emails out to people, and a signal when someone opens one.
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What the Email by Zapier Zapier integration is for
Email by Zapier is a built-in Zapier tool, not an outside service you sign up for. It hands you a custom address ending in zapiermail.com. Anything forwarded there can start an automation, and the same tool can send plain or HTML emails from that address, with an optional read receipt.
Three results people actually get from it. First, an inbox that acts as a doorbell: forward a supplier invoice, a form alert or a parsed newsletter to the address, and New Inbound Email starts the rest of the chain. Second, a notification email written for you: Send Outbound Email builds a message from data an earlier step carried and sends it to a teammate or a client. Third, proof of reading: switch on read receipts in that same action, then a second automation built on New Read Receipt tells you the moment the message is opened.
Now the part the app page keeps quiet. This is not a bulk sender. The free and trial plans cap it at 5 emails a day, paid plans at 10 an hour, and above that Zapier answers with an error that literally sends you to Mandrill, Mailgun or Gmail. It cannot send from your own domain either: the address is a zapiermail.com one. And it has no search step, so it never looks up an email that already arrived.
If you are weighing tools before you commit, the Make vs Zapier comparison is the place to start.
Zapier vocabulary in one minute
Seven words come back on every line of this page. Here they are in plain English.
- Zap
- One automation on Zapier: a starting event, then one or more steps that repeat every time it happens. Here, often a forwarded email followed by a send.
- Trigger
- The event that kicks a Zap off. Here, an email reaching your zapiermail.com address, or a sent email being opened.
- Action
- The step that does the work once the Zap is running. Email by Zapier has exactly one: sending a message from your zapiermail.com address.
- Task
- The unit Zapier bills you for. One action that finishes without failing equals one task; your plan is a monthly count of them.
- Polling vs instant
- Polling means Zapier checks an app on a timer. Instant means the app calls Zapier itself the second something happens. Both triggers here are instant.
- Filter
- A gate placed after the trigger: the Zap goes on only if the incoming email matches the rule you set. Useful to keep one forwarded alert type out of many.
- Connection
- The account link Zapier stores once for an app. Every Zap that receives on or sends from your zapiermail.com address then reuses it.
What it really costs
Email by Zapier is not a premium app, so it runs on the free plan.
- Free plan100 tasks a month, two-step Zaps only
- Sending cap5 emails a day on Free or trial, 10 an hour on paid plans
- Premium appNo
A trigger never costs a task, and neither does waiting for mail. You pay one task each time Send Outbound Email succeeds; a failed send is not counted. The free plan gives 100 tasks a month but only two-step Zaps: one trigger, one action. Add a filter or a second action and the Zap becomes multi-step, which needs a paid plan. Both triggers are instant, so the polling grid below never slows them down.
Connect Email by Zapier in three steps
- 01
Open the Apps page
From your Zapier account, go to Apps and click + Add connection. A dialog opens with a search box where you type the name of the tool you want to link.
- 02
Pick the tool and confirm
Search for Email by Zapier, select it, then click Add connection. The tool carries the Zapier name and hands out a zapiermail.com address, so the account you link is the one you already use here.
- 03
Sign in and grant access
If a sign-in step appears in the new tab, complete it and allow Zapier to use the account. The connection is then stored once and reused by any Zap that receives or sends through your zapiermail.com address.
Your first Zap: invoices to a Slack channel
GoalA bookkeeper forwards each supplier invoice to the zapiermail.com address, and only the real invoices get posted to the finance channel.
- 01
Build: choose the trigger
Create a Zap, pick Email by Zapier and the New Inbound Email event. Zapier shows the custom address to forward invoices to; copy it into your mail rules.
- 02
Test: bring back a real email
Forward one invoice, then run the test. Zapier returns the three most recent items received, so you map the next steps on a genuine message rather than a guess.
- 03
Add the filter
Click the plus icon, choose Filter, then set the field, the rule and the value. Pick a text rule for text: the wrong rule type is why filters never pass.
- 04
Add the Slack action
Choose Slack and Send Channel Message, select the finance channel, and drop in the values from the email that your team needs to see.
- 05
Publish
Test each step once, read what came back, then click Publish. With a filter on board this is a multi-step Zap, so it needs a paid plan.
Email by Zapier triggers
2 events start a Zap when something happens in Email by Zapier, and 2 of them are instant: the app calls Zapier straight away, whatever your plan.
New Inbound Email
Instant triggerIn Zapier“Triggers when an email is forwarded to your own custom zapiermail.com address.”
Each message forwarded to your personal zapiermail.com address starts the Zap, so any inbox that can forward mail becomes a starting point, even one Zapier has no app for. Think of it as a doorbell you can wire into Gmail rules, Outlook rules or a vendor's notification settings.
New Read Receipt
Instant triggerIn Zapier“Triggers when an email that you've enabled read receipts on via our Send Outbound Email trigger is opened.”
This one waits for a recipient to open an email you sent through Send Outbound Email with read receipts switched on. It closes the loop on outreach: you learn the message was seen without asking anyone.
Email by Zapier actions
Email by Zapier gives you 1 action. For each one: what it does for you, when to reach for it, and what to watch out for.
Send Outbound Email
ActionIn Zapier“Send up to 5 emails per day on Free or Trial Zapier plans, or up to 10 emails per hour on paid Zapier plans from a custom zapiermail.com address.”
Composes and sends a message from your zapiermail.com address, using text or HTML put together from earlier steps. Plain text gets turned into very basic HTML so most mail clients display it cleanly.
When it breaks
Most failures with this tool come from volume, not from bugs.
Email by Zapier is meant for light, occasional mail. The cases below are the ones documented for this tool, plus the general limits every Zap shares. When a Zap stops for reasons you cannot place, the Zapier troubleshooting guide walks through the diagnosis.
"Sorry! That is too many emails sent"
You went over the sending cap. Zapier's own error points to Mandrill, Mailgun or Gmail for bulk volume, which tells you this tool is the wrong fit for it.The daily cap on the free plan
On Free or trial, Send Outbound Email stops at 5 messages a day. A Zap that fires more often than that will hit the wall before lunch.Read receipts that never arrive
New Read Receipt only reacts to emails sent with Enable read receipts? set to True. Anything sent before you flipped that setting will never report an open.A Zap that keeps waking itself up
If the outbound email goes to your own zapiermail.com address, it fires New Inbound Email again, sends again, and drains your tasks fast.Nothing from before publishing
A Zap only reacts to mail that arrives after it is switched on. Messages already sitting in an inbox are not replayed; moving them is a separate job.A sudden flood of mail
After a bulk forward or a mailbox migration, a huge burst of incoming emails can be held back by Zapier's flood protection instead of running one by one.
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