FAQ
Can I be part of multiple organizations?
Missive was built from the ground up to support multiple organizations per account. So yes, you can use it in multiple contexts.
How secure is Missive?
Please visit our dedicated Security page for more information.
Why doesn’t Missive work in Safari’s private browsing mode?
Safari doesn’t allow data to be written in localStorage while in private browsing mode. Among other things, Missive uses localStorage to store your session token and identify requests to our server.
UI
Why are my conversations closed when I archive them from my inbox?
At some point you probably discarded the warning prompted when archiving asking you if you also want to close the conversation. Saved warnings / confirmation dialogs can be re-enabled from the Preferences > Warnings section in each user’s settings:
How to invite/add someone to a conversation?
There are two ways to add people to a conversation:
- Posting a chat comment with a @mention. This always shows the conversation in the mentioned person’s Inbox.
- Adding the person through the “Add people” menu, at the top of the conversation. In this case, it’s possible to choose whether you want the person to see the conversation in their Inbox or only give them access to the conversation, archived, for future reference. This is done through the Show in their inbox checkbox. This checkbox remembers the last checked / unchecked state you used, so if you have previously unchecked it, you just need to check it again to make sure adding people through this menu will make the conversation appear in their Inbox.
Why is there a different unread count in my unified and sub-inboxes?
It’s possible (and expected) for the unified inbox to show a lower number of unread conversations than the combined total of sub-inboxes in the case where unread conversations are present in more than one sub-inbox. For instance, if you receive an inquiry at your main shared inbox, then you replied from your personal address and received a reply in your personal inbox. When this happens, the conversation will be counted in both your shared and personal sub-inboxes, but only once in the unified.
Can I change the number of pinned searches?
Yes, open your preferences and look for the Show recent searches option and change the number pinned searches allowed. To disable this functionality, uncheck the checkbox.
Why are labels not showing up in my coworker’s sidebar?
The idea is that members of an organization may have different responsibilities and be interested in different labels. Listing all labels in everyone’s sidebar by default may feel cluttered for those interested in just a few labels. We automatically show newly created labels in the sidebar for the person creating the said label, since they are likely to be interested in it.
Everyone can easily manage labels as they see fit: hidden labels can be opened by clicking the More button just above opened labels, and can be hidden again by hovering and clicking the X button as shown here:
What are the meanings of the user avatars?
Orange clock icon:User has snoozed the conversation.
Blue dot (top right corner):User has not read all emails in the conversation.
Greyed avatar:User has archived the conversation.
Colored avatar:User has the conversation in their Inbox or Unassigned mailbox.
Blue allow:User is currently viewing the conversation:
Can I label my canned responses?
You cannot label responses. But you can link them with your organization teams. For example, here I created a team name Backend, and then linked a response to it.
When searching a response you can prepend your search with the name of the team (see image below). There I search “backend” and it selected the only response linked to this team. [team name + search query] will find only responses from a team containing the search query.
How can I quickly apply a label when I have hundreds of them?
You can quickly search and apply a label to a conversation by doing the label shortcut Cmd + Shift + L on macOS or Ctrl + Shift + L on Windows.
You can also mark a label as a favorite so the label is always easily accessible at the top of the menu. To do so, just right-click any label in the sidebar and select Mark as favorite.
My company does not use Google Apps. Can we use Missive?
Yes, we support most IMAP servers, this includes Office 365, iCloud, Outlook.com, etc.
Can I import more than one email account?
As a full-featured email client, Missive supports multiple email accounts so you can use it both for work and personal email.
How can I define multiple signatures for the same email address?
In Missive, you can setup any number of aliases for each of your email accounts, and each alias can have a different signature. Even if you don’t have different alias addresses, you can create multiple aliases with the same Address and Name, just for the purpose of setting a different signature for each.
Here’s where to add aliases the in Accounts settings:
Are my email actions synced to back to my mail server?
Of course, but with one exception: drafts being collaboratively editable in Missive, they are not synced back to each collaborator’s Drafts folder.
Will my personal emails be shared with my coworkers?
No, your coworkers will never see your personal emails by default. You can choose to grant them access to your account or invite them on a per-conversation basis.
Can delegated users customize their name and signature on a shared account?
Yes. It’s possible for delegated users to customize their name and signature when sending from a shared account.
To do so, each user must open their Missive settings (by clicking their name in the left sidebar), select the Accounts tab, then select the shared account and click Use my own. Then they can customize their name and / or signature at will.
Why are emails/conversations sometimes duplicated?
Sending emails from outside Missive is known to cause duplicate conversations, and it does so for a specific reason. Missive uses a pretty complex algorithm to enable email sharing among coworkers without privacy issues.
Here’s an example: once a company using Missive had a shared conversation (everyone in the company had access to that conversation). One of the employees used Gmail.com to send an email with sensitive content that needed to stay private between just this employee and one of his coworkers. Since the employee used Gmail.com to send his email, he did not think the email would be inserted in the shared Missive conversation… Unfortunately, it did. Everyone else in the company saw the email in Missive and it caused some friction. Since this day, Missive’s email sharing algorithm was updated to always prevent emails sent outside Missive from being inserted in shared conversations. Instead, these emails are only shown to you in a separate, private conversation. It may not be easy to spot, but if you take a look, you will see that one of your “duplicate” conversations contains 1 or more emails that aren’t present in the other, shared conversation. These are emails sent outside Missive.
To sum up: sending emails from outside Missive does create duplicate conversations, and there isn’t much we can do here. We prefer playing on the safe side for the privacy concern explained above.
Why is my teammate not able to send emails?
They do not have access to any alias address to use in the From field. For your teammate to be able to send an email, there are a few options:
- When you want your teammate to send an email on your behalf, add them to the conversation and create the reply yourself. By creating the reply yourself, you can set the From address to any alias you own. Then once you have set the From address, your colleague can write the email and press Send.
- You can also share the whole email account with them. This will give them access to all incoming emails and will let them reply using any alias configured on the account.
- Lastly, your colleague can import their personal email account in Missive and configure aliases for the addresses they must be able to reply from. The emails they send would go through their personal account. Note for Gmail users: to add an alias to their personal email account on Missive, users also need to add it as a “Send mail as” address on their Gmail, as explained on this page.
We do plan on introducing more flexible options in the future, namely allowing teammates to send with specific aliases without sharing the whole account. But right now these are the possible options.
Why are my Gmail account emails not importing?
One common reason is you configured your Gmail to not make the All Mail folder available on IMAP, which is required for Missive to sync your emails properly.
See the attached image showing where to enable the All Mail folder on IMAP from your Gmail settings.
Where are my email folders / labels?
Missive supports folders and sub-folders. They are called Labels in the Missive interface. You can open them by clicking the More menu in the left sidebar and look for the Email Labels section.
NOTE You can enable an option to always show a label if there is one or many unread conversations in it. Click on the ellipsis … next to the label name in your sidebar and select the Show if unread option.
Do you support Microsoft Exchange?
Only if the server is configured to support IMAP connections. Supporting the Exchange protocol directly is not something we will implement in the short term. We’ve been in touch with several Exchange users and most of them told us that IMAP access was enabled on their server, so Missive’s support for generic IMAP would work for them.
Can I set a different conversation color for each of my email accounts?
Yes. You can do so using rules. For each of your email accounts, you would create a rule that applies the desired color to the conversations.
ExtraThis can also be handy with time-based conditions. You could apply a red color to conversations containing messages that haven’t been replied after 2 hours. Read more about rules
I get an invalid SSL / TLS certificate error when trying to add my email account, what should I do?
If you receive this error when adding your email account:
Your SSL / TLS certificate is invalid, so Missive can’t establish a secure IMAP connection. If this is not a concern to you, choose “none” under Encryption.
It means you probably have an expired certificate or a self-signed certificate. You can contact support@missiveapp.com to know why your certificate is invalid.
Expired certificate
If your server’s SSL/TLS certificate is expired you should contact your certificate authority to get a new one.
Self-signed certificate
Missive currently refuses to connect to IMAP servers with a self-signed certificate, because if we allowed it, it would mean our connections to users’ IMAP servers wouldn’t actually be secure. A self-signed certificate can be generated by anyone, so if our algorithm accepted any self-signed certificate, it means our connection to your server could be intercepted by a hacker who could swap your certificate for theirs, and Missive wouldn’t notice because it accepts anybody’s self-signed certificate. Simply put: someone could read your email data over our connection to your server, and neither us or you would notice.
NoteIf a server’s SSL/TLS certificate is self-signed, it is not signed by a recognized certificate authority. This is often the case on default server installations.
However, people using a self-signed certificate and not planning on purchasing an authority-signed one for their IMAP server is something common. To remain secure by default while supporting this setup, what email applications usually do when people connect an IMAP account is:
- First, refuse to accept a self-signed certificate
- Show a warning to the user
- Offer the user a checkbox that says “Allow the use of my self-signed certificate”
- If checked, the setting will be remembered for this user only
The procedure above is exactly what we plan to do. We have no ETA yet, but we will offer support for self-signed certificates at some point.
Note that if the above isn’t a concern to you, you should be able to successfully import your IMAP account by choosing “none” as the Encryption method. Same for SMTP.
Read Tracking
How can I enable read tracking for all emails?
To enable read tracking in all your sent emails, open your settings and check the Track reads checkbox.
NoteIf you send yourself a test email to try out the functionality, Missive will not show that you read your own email if you do so in Missive itself. You will need to open your email in a different app, like Gmail, Outlook, etc.
You can read more about read tracking in Missive on this page.
Why is read tracking not working with distribution lists and Google Groups?
Email tracking works by inserting different transparent images for each recipient in a sent email.
e.g. TO: a@acme.com, b@acme.com
This email would be sent twice with identical versions apart from the distinct transparent pixel for each recipient.
This way when a@acme.com opens the email in their email client, the email client requests the transparent image from our server. Knowing that this image was used only in the version of the email sent to a@acme.com, we can safely say that a@acme.com read the email.
The problem with distribution lists is that the pixel will be the same for all recipients.
e.g. TO: distribution@acme.com
This email would be sent once with one transparent pixel. The distribution list server will then forward that email to everyone on the list, including that same unique image. Thus, whenever someone from the list reads an email, their email client will load that same image.
We have no way to know that those emails were open by different people.
Can I customize read tracking notifications?
You have several options related to read tracking. First, and probably most important, you can disable desktop and/or mobile notifications in your Settings.
Then, you may want to keep the Activity room in your sidebar to see the number of new people who read some of your emails, but you may not want this to affect the unread badge on your application Dock or tray (macOS / Windows) or home screen (iOS / Android). You can get this behavior by right-clicking the Activity room and unchecking Include in badge count:
Alternatively, if you want to use read tracking but do not care about live notifications at all, you may just remove the Activity room from your left sidebar by clicking the x next to it.
Search
Why are search results different based on what folder you are in?
This is a limitation of your IMAP provider. Gmail and Office 365 are the only email providers to offer a virtual “All Mail” mailbox that allows third party apps like Missive to search in all folders at once. Other IMAP providers are lacking this, so Missive only searches in one folder at a time, either Inbox, Sent, Archive, etc.
Can the search default to the inbox instead of the archive?
If you have at least one IMAP email account imported, the email search will default to the Archive mailbox. This means messages in your Inbox won’t be searched unless you change the search scope to Inbox. You can change the default search mailbox to Inbox in your preferences.
Contacts
How to import a contact list?
Select an existing contact book or create a new one. At the bottom of the contact list, select Import contacts (CSV) from the options menu.
At the moment only CSV files built using the Gmail and Outlook formats are supported. Learn how to export a contact list from Gmail and Outlook. If your CSV file is from another source, you can easily adapt it to the Outlook format based on this demo CSV file.
How to export a contact list from Gmail?
Go to https://contacts.google.com and click Export in the sidebar
How to export a contact list from Outlook?
Go to https://outlook.live.com/people, click Manage and select Export contacts
SMS
How to import an SMS (Twilio) account?
Missive needs your Twilio SID and Auth Token, plus your phone number. Both SID and Auth Token should be available in your Twilio console page. Look for them on the right side of your screen.
Still from the console, you can access your Phone Numbers by the “three dots” button in the sidebar. It should be under the Super Network category. Here’s the link in case you can’t find it. From there, you should have the option to buy a number. Once bought, that is the full number you will need to enter back on Missive. Don’t forget to enter the country code as well (your number should start with a plus + sign).
Can I import my mobile phone SMS in Missive?
No. Missive offers no way to integrate with your existing phone number SMS messages. You need to use a third party service named Twilio. It’s a service that allows you to setup a new phone number to which you can receive and send SMS using custom programming or services like Missive. Its main use case are companies that want to offer customer support through SMS as an alternate channel beside email.
Mac app
I cannot set Missive as my default email client.
Since the OS X El Capitan update, many users are unable to change their default email application. See this thread on Apple’s forums for a workaround.
Windows app
How to run Missive automatically at startup?
To run Missive automatically at startup in Windows 10, you need to add it to your Startup folder. See how in this Microsoft guide.
Pricing
How to upgrade to a paid plan?
You must be the owner of an organization. Open your Organizations settings on the Billing tab and choose your subscription plan. Upgrading must be done on a computer; it is not available on mobile.
Do you charge in C$ for Canadian customers? 🇨🇦
No, although we are a Canadian company all our prices are in US$.
Why do you charge for Twitter but not for Facebook and Twilio accounts?
Twitter charges a monthly fee to subscribe to your tweets and direct messages. Facebook and Twilio do not charge us to access your content.
How does the history limitation work?
Emails and chat comments older than your plan’s history limit are hidden from the interface and replaced by a message suggesting you upgrade. Nothing is deleted from Missive and your full email history always remains available on Gmail, Office 365, or IMAP.
Will existing customers be exempted from price raises?
Yes, existing customers will be able to keep using Missive for the same price. Some new features might not be available to those on a grandfathered plan.
Can I get a discount?
We don't give any discount and this is mainly to control our costs as a small bootstrapped company. This applies to nonprofits, schools and businesses outside of the US.
How many personal accounts can I import?
All paid plans include an unlimited number of personal email, Facebook and Twilio (SMS) accounts. Twitter is the exception: all accounts are charged $20/month each. On the free plan you can only import one personal account.
Others
How can I change my password?
To change your password, you must click your name in the left sidebar of the app, click Log out, then enter your login email on our password reset page. You will receive an email containing instructions to reset the password for your account.
How to delete a Missive account?
- Login to Missive.
- Given you have an organization and are the owner:
- Go to your organization settings.
- Delete your organization.
- Delete all your email accounts.
- Send us an email at support@missiveapp.com asking us to delete your user account.
Do you offer a Linux version?
No, we don't offer a desktop Linux app. Linux users can still use Missive web version. Here's why we don't offer a Linux version for the moment:
- There is not enough demand.
- Each release needs to be tested, as a team of 3 where no one uses Linux, this would take too much of our time.
You are more than welcome to vote for the feature request.