Choose which account your email sends from
Send through LumiHQ, your Gmail, or your own SMTP server — and what each costs you.
Every client-facing email — the ones you type and the automatic ones — goes out through a single sender you choose once.
The three options
| Option | Set-up | Delivery tracking |
|---|---|---|
| LumiHQ Mail Server | None — it works out of the box | Sent, delivered, opened, clicked, bounced |
| Gmail | Your address plus a Google App Password | Sent and failures only |
| SMTP Server | Host, port, username, password | Sent and failures only |
Whichever you pick, the email is branded as your studio and replies still come back into your Inbox — every message carries both the thread address that does the routing and your real address, so a client who hits reply reaches you either way.
Which one to choose
Stay on the LumiHQ mail server unless you have a specific reason not to. It's the only option that can tell you an email was opened or bounced, and its sending domain is already set up to pass the spam checks that decide whether a gallery invite lands in an inbox or in junk.
Use Gmail or your own SMTP when the mail genuinely has to come from your own address — because clients reply to that address out of habit, or your own mailbox needs a copy of every send in its Sent folder.
Gmail and SMTP can tell us a message was accepted for delivery and nothing after that. The Opened and Clicked badges in your Outbox go quiet, and “did they even get it?” goes back to being a question you can't answer from here.
Setting up Gmail
- Turn on 2-Step Verification in your Google account — App Passwords don't exist without it.
- Create an App Password in Google, and copy the 16-character value.
- Paste your Gmail address and that App Password into Settings → Email.
- Use Test Connection before you save. A failed test here is a failed send later.
Your ordinary Gmail password will not work, and neither will a password from an account without 2-Step Verification. Google requires an App Password for this kind of connection.
Setting up SMTP
Your host gives you a server name, a port and a username and password. Ports 465 and 587 are the usual pair — 465 wants the secure option on, 587 usually wants it off (it upgrades the connection itself). Test Connection is the fastest way to settle which combination your host wants.
Going back
Switch to LumiHQ Mail Server puts everything back with one click, and your stored password is cleared with it. Nothing that's already been sent is affected — this only changes the next send.
Send yourself a test gallery invite after changing sender. It's the one email that carries a link, a logo and an image, so it exercises far more of the path than a plain message does.