Can I start a new topic by sending an email message?

[BKerr (Barbara Kerr)]

Hi Jeff,

Last month you sent me the link for setting up incoming email (dated April 2016):

Configuring Reply via Email

If your Discourse does not have incoming email set up, here’s how: if you already have basic reply via email set up (which is common on hosting plans), and you want to add the ability to start a new topic via email, see this topic. You have two options for enabling incoming emails to your Discourse: polling via POP3 or pushing to the API 1. Polling emails via POP3 If you want to poll emails using POP3 you must first setup email polling. For that, I recommend that you follow the tutor…

But, I now see a subsequent posting (dated July 2016) where it seems Discourse has made the first instruction moot/not necessary.

Reply-by-email enabled for all Discourse customers

After a few weeks of testing, we are now introducing reply-by-email to all our hosted customers. Every email notification your users receive from now on will include the notice “reply to this email to respond” in the footer. [image] Replying by email is great for people who are on the move or just happen to prefer email for whatever reason – accessibility, habit, or offline access. (…) This topic is for comments on the original blog entry at: http://blog.discourse.org/2016/07/reply-by-email-…

My question: Do I still need an email address - outside of Discourse - in order to initialt email postings AND replies fully functional?

Apologies in advance; I know CMS systems, but email set up is not something I have any experience with.

Thx.