This guide explains how to set up incoming emails to create new topics or group messages in Discourse, including configuration of site settings and category or group-specific settings.
Required user level: Administrator
This guide covers:
- Enabling and configuring incoming emails
- Choosing between category and group for incoming emails
- Setting up incoming emails for a group
- Setting up incoming emails for a category
- Deciding how forwarded emails are handled
If you have already set up reply via email, or you are on a hosting plan that pre-configures your incoming email, you’re now ready to set up Starting a New Topic via Email.
Configuring site settings
To enable incoming emails, you need to configure three main site settings:
-
email_in: This setting must be enabled for incoming emails to work. -
email in allowed groups: Users must belong to this group to send an email to Discourse. -
enable_staged_users: This setting allows the creation of staged users for unknown email addresses.
For Discourse hosted sites, the
enable_staged_userssetting is disabled and hidden during the trial to prevent abuse. Once a subscription is started, the setting is unhidden. To ask for it to be enabled during your trial, contact team@discourse.org.
To configure these settings:
- Go to your site’s Admin panel
- Navigate to Settings
- Search for each setting and configure as needed
- Can’t be mentioned or searched for
- Don’t receive digests
- Can only be notified of and reply to topics they started or were invited to
- Will be promoted to a normal user if they create an account using the same email address
Choosing between categories and groups
Decide whether you want incoming emails to create topics in a category or messages in a group.
Using a group
Benefits of using a group:
- Useful for setting up a support-like workflow
- Creates a message sent to all group members
- Messages appear in
/my/messages - Anyone can send an email to the group
- Any group member can read, reply, delete, or archive the message
- Each group member has their own read tracking state
Using a category
Benefits of using a category:
- Simulates a mailing list
- Creates a topic in the specified category
- Anyone with access to the category can read and reply via web interface or email
- Respects category security settings
- Respects the
email in allowed groupssite setting - Allows disabling staged users on a per-category basis
Setting up incoming emails for a group
To configure incoming emails for a group:
-
Go to the Groups page from the main menu
-
Click on the group name (or create a new group)
-
For a new group, find the “Custom incoming email address” field at the bottom of the form
-
For an existing group, go to the Manage tab, then click Interaction in the left side menu
-
Enter the email address(es) you want to associate with the group (separate multiple addresses with
|) -
Click Save to apply the changes
Setting up incoming emails for a category
To configure incoming emails for a category:
-
Go to the category page (e.g.,
/c/<category_slug>) -
Click the Edit button
-
In the Edit category modal, click the Settings tab
-
Look for “Accept emails from anonymous users with no accounts” and “Custom incoming email address” fields
-
Enable “Accept emails from anonymous users with no accounts” if you want to create staged users for unknown email addresses
-
Enter the email address(es) you want to associate with the category
-
Click Save Category to apply the changes
Forwarded emails behavior
You can decide how forwarded emails appear in Discourse using the forwarded emails behaviour site setting, which has the following options:
- hide - a new new topic or PM will be created with the forwarded text included as hidden text that can be expanded to view
- quote - a new topic or PM will be created with the forwarded text included as quoted text.
- create replies - a new topic or PM will be created authored by the original sender. Replies will be created authored by participants in the email. If the user accounts do not already exist matching the sender email addresses, they will be created as staged user accounts.
Additional resources
Last edited by @tobiaseigen 2025-09-24T17:30:57Z
Last checked by @hugh 2024-08-06T05:58:13Z
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