How to receive emails via SendGrid Inbound Parse or Mailgun Routes
Anyone who sends through their own SendGrid or Mailgun account can send received emails directly to Cognizy, where they become conversations.
2 min readBasicUpdated on November 12, 2026
Where to find it in Cognizy
Video lesson coming soon. For now, follow the steps below.
If your email channel uses your own SendGrid or Mailgun account, you can have the provider itself deliver to Cognizy the emails that arrive at your receiving address. You copy a URL from Cognizy and paste it into the provider. It's an alternative to IMAP for those who already have the MX record for the address pointed to the provider.
Where to find it in Cognizy
Before you start
- Only the owner and administrators can manage channels.
- The email channel must already be set up under the SendGrid or Mailgun tab, with your API key.
- Have access to your provider account and to the DNS of the domain (or subdomain) of the receiving address.
- If you don't use SendGrid or Mailgun, we recommend receiving via IMAP instead, which doesn't require DNS changes.
Step by step
- Step 1:
At the bottom of the menu, click Settings.
- Step 2:
Under Channels, click Email.
- Step 3:
In the channel card, under 2. Sender and provider, click Edit.
- Step 4:
On your provider's tab (SendGrid or Mailgun), click Set up email receiving and tracking.
- Step 5:
Under Email receiving (creates conversations), click Copy next to the URL. It already includes your company's security code: copy it in full and don't share it.
- Step 6:
In SendGrid, go to Settings › Inbound Parse and click Add Host & URL. Under Receiving domain, choose the domain (or subdomain) of your receiving address; under Destination URL, paste the URL you copied from Cognizy. Click Add to save.
- Step 7:
In your DNS panel, create an MX record for that domain (or subdomain) pointing to mx.sendgrid.net, with priority 10. Use a subdomain just for this (like parse.) if the main domain already receives the company's emails in another inbox.
- Step 8:
If you use Mailgun: on the Receiving tab of the Mailgun panel, create a route with the match_recipient filter and your receiving address, and the forward action with the URL you copied from the Mailgun tab in Cognizy. Save the route.
How to know it worked
Send an email to the receiving address: within a few seconds it will appear as a conversation in Serve › Conversations, in the channel's default department.
If something goes wrong
The email didn't turn into a conversation.
Check that the URL was pasted in full, including the code at the end, and that the MX record has already propagated (this can take a few hours).
After changing the MX record, the company's inbox stopped receiving emails.
The MX record sends all emails for that domain to the provider. Revert the MX to its previous value and use a subdomain just for receiving, or use IMAP instead.
Next step
Open Serve › Conversations and reply to the first email that arrived.
Sign in with your Cognizy account to save your progress.
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