Send email from a flow

A great many automations end in an email: a payment reminder, a reply to an enquiry, a heads-up to a colleague. The Send email step does exactly that — a real, personalised message, sent from the right account, as a step in your flow.

The Send email step

Add a Send email step and fill in three fields:

• To — the recipient address.
• Subject — the subject line.
• Body — the message.

Every field accepts template variables, so each email is written for its recipient rather than mass-produced. A reminder body might read:

Hi {{ loop.item.firstName }},

Invoice {{ loop.item.number }} for {{ loop.item.amount }} is now overdue.
Could you let us know when we can expect payment?

Thanks,
{{ user.firstName }}

{{ user.firstName }} is the person who ran the flow; {{ loop.item.* }} pulls fields off whatever record you’re looping over. See Template variables for everything in scope.

Send through: which account carries it

The Send through setting decides which account the email actually goes out from:

Send through	What it means
Automatic (default)	Routario picks the best available account for you
Resend	Routario’s built-in transactional sender
Gmail	a connected Google Workspace mailbox
Microsoft 365	a connected Microsoft 365 mailbox

Leave it on Automatic unless you have a reason not to. Automatic resolves in order: your workspace’s default carrier → the single account you’ve connected (Gmail or Microsoft 365) → Resend as the fallback.

Why connect Gmail or Microsoft 365? Sending through a real mailbox means the email comes from a person — replies land back in that inbox, the message threads naturally, and it doesn’t look machine-sent. Connect an account under Settings → Connections → Apps (Google or Microsoft). Resend is the zero-setup option: a reliable transactional sender, good for system-style notifications.

Set up your sender

Configure the built-in (Resend) sender once, under Settings → Connections → Apps → Email:

• From address — the address your automatic emails are sent from.
• From name — the display name recipients see.
• Reply-to — where replies should go, if different from the from address.

When you send through a connected Gmail or Microsoft 365 account instead, the email goes out from that mailbox’s address — the settings above apply to the built-in sender.

A failed send doesn’t stop the flow

If a Send email step can’t deliver, it logs a warning and the flow keeps going — it won’t halt the run. So when an email really matters, run the flow once and confirm the message actually arrived before you rely on it. (One exception: if you explicitly choose Gmail or Microsoft 365 and that account’s connection has expired, the step fails and prompts you to reconnect it under Settings → Connections → Apps.)

Worked example: a polite payment reminder

Pair sending with a scheduled flow to chase overdue invoices hands-off.

1. Schedule trigger — every weekday at 08:00.
2. Find records — the invoices that are now overdue. Label the list overdue.
3. For each over {{ overdue }}.
4. Send email — To is {{ loop.item.email }}, with a Subject and Body that name the invoice and amount (as above). Leave Send through on Automatic.

There’s a complete, follow-along version of this in Chase unpaid invoices automatically.

Where to go next

• Send email — full reference — every field, with example values.
• Chase unpaid invoices automatically — sending email inside a real, scheduled flow.
• Receive email into a flow — the other half: act on email that comes in.