Forwarding email from your own address

Forwarding is how mail sent to your address reaches Zendesk. The rule you build matters more than the setting.

Forwarding is how mail sent to your address reaches Zendesk. The rule you build matters more than the setting.

Set up forwarding

1. Get the target address from Zendesk, under the support address you added.
2. In your own mail system, create a forwarding rule from your support address to that target.
3. Forward everything, not only unread mail or mail matching a filter.
4. In Zendesk, click the options menu next to that support address and choose Verify forwarding. Zendesk sends a test message and tells you whether the route works.
5. Send a real test message from an outside address and confirm a ticket appears.

Forward everything

The temptation is to forward selectively, keeping a copy or filtering spam first. Both cause trouble.

• Filtering first means Zendesk never sees what your mail system judged to be spam, including the customers it got wrong.
• Keeping a copy means two places to look, and somebody will start answering from the mailbox again.

Forward all of it and let Zendesk's own suspension handle the rubbish, where you can review it.

Stop using the mailbox

Once forwarding works, the original mailbox should be empty and nobody should open it. A team that keeps answering from both has two histories, duplicate replies, and no reliable figures.

Worth saying out loud on the day you switch, because the habit is strong.

Authentication, and why forwarding trips over it

Zendesk can check authentication on incoming mail, and forwarded mail is the category most likely to fail it, because forwarding is exactly what breaks the original sender's authentication. Whether that check is running depends on your account, so check which case you are in.

If the check is already on, it applies to your forwarded mail today, not from some future date. If it is off, Zendesk begins switching it on from 23 September 2026, at the Minimal level. Either way a route that works perfectly can start suspending messages without anything on your side changing, so watch your suspended tickets for a fortnight rather than waiting for a complaint.

Where forwarding breaks

Some mail systems rewrite messages when forwarding, which affects how the sender is seen and can cause suspensions. If tickets arrive with your own address as the requester, that is what is happening, and the fix is in the forwarding configuration.

See also

• Forwarding Gmail or Google Workspace to Zendesk
• Adding a support address
• Why tickets get suspended