19 January 2014

How to use Google Apps email address and your domain with Zendesk

This will make your Zendesk account to be able to receive and send emails using your own email address from Google Apps and from your domain name.

For example, when someone sends an email to support@yourdomain.com you will receive the ticket in Zendesk. When you answer the ticket, the user will receive an email from that same address support@yourdomain.com and not from support@yourdomain.zendesk.com.

This can be configured to also work if the user sends an email to questions@yourdomain.com or anything@yourdomain.com to receive the reply from the same address that they sent it to. Here is how to configure your Google Apps email to achieve this:

To setup your Google Apps domain email to receive and send emails via Zendesk, do the following:

  1. Go to admin.google.com and login
  2. Go to Google Apps > Settings for Gmail > Advanced settings
  3. Choose Default Routing and click on Add Settings
  4. Select Single recipient and enter the email address where you want to receive the emails from the users (for example, ask@yourdomain.com)
  5. On Modify Message select Add custom headers
  6. Click Add and enter X-Orig-To and enter the same email as above (example ask@yourdomain.com)
  7. On Envelope recipient choose Change envelope recipient and replace recipient with you Zendesk email address (for example ask@yourdomain.zendesk.com)
  8. Below in the Options select Perform this action on non-recognized and recognized addresses and click on Save

Repeat these steps for all the different email addresses you would like to add.

To enable replying from these emails:
  1. Go to your Zendesk dashboard and login (example yourdomain.yourdomain.com)
  2. Go to Settings by clicking on the gear icon in the lower left part of the screen
  3. Click on Email and click on Add address
  4. Click Connect other and add your new address.
If you can't add the new address, make sure to delete it from the Settings > People section first if you've used it before.

In order to safely allow Zendesk to send email from your domain name without being marked as SPAM, you will need to add a SPF record to your domain name records.

To do this, go to your domain name account (like Godaddy.com) and add the following TXT record in your DNS settings:

TXT Name:

THT Value:
v=spf1 include:mail.zendesk.com include:_spf.google.com include:_spf.zdsys.com include:support.zendesk.com include:smtp.zendesk.com ?all

1 Hour

Update 11.03.2014: (the SPF has been updated again and the new one is the one above)
Just to make sure your sent mail doesn't get marked as SPAM, add this as the THT Value:

v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com include:_spf.zdsys.com include:support.zendesk.com include:smtp.zendesk.com ?all

Thanks goes to +Sebastian Nash for finding and sharing this tip!

Update 09.06.2014:
Recently, Zendesk have updated their Pass through email addresses system to make it even better. The only different thing you'll need to make is: instead of checking Enable on Pass through email addresses, you need to click on Add address and add the email address that you have just created in Google Apps.

Update 27.03.2015: Since the Google Apps interface is changed, to get to the Email Routing now you will need to login to admin.google.com and:
1. Press on the "Apps" icon
2. Choose "Google Apps"
3. Press on "Gmail"
4. Scroll down and press on "Advanced settings"
5. From the top menu, choose the "Default routing" tab

Update 14.08.2015: 
Updated the THT value (the new one is above in the main text) from:



v=spf1 include:mail.zendesk.com ?all

Update 24.10.2017:  
There are small interface changes to the Zendesk settings. Please add the new email addresses using "Connect other" and make sure you haven't used them for testing before. If you did, you will need to delete them from user (customer) section.

The procedure still works.

That’s it! Now when someone sends you an email to your address (for example ask@yourdomain.com), you will receive the new ticket in your Zendesk. And when you reply to it, the user will receive an email from the same address (ask@yourdomain.com) instead of ask@yourdomain.zendesk.com or contact@yourdomain.com