Though support conversations are mostly initiated by customers, in some cases your support agents may proactively want to reach out to customers themselves. For example, it can be a customer success effort where agents just want to check how users are doing or to inform them about maintenance or incidents and downtimes. With Freshdesk, you can send outbound emails from your helpdesk to customers, convert them into tickets, and track their progress.


To compose a new outbound email, agents can click on the '+New' button on the top right corner of the agent portal and select the 'New Email' option.



Note: The New Email option is only available for an agent when the Allow agents to initiate conversation with customers is toggled ON under Admin > Channels > Email > Advanced Settings



You will be redirected to the new email page to compose and send out emails to any new customers or your existing contacts.


Once the outbound email has been sent by the agent, by default, the ticket will be marked as closed and assigned to the agent who sent the email. The ticket requester will be the contact you sent an email to and the SLA timers start running only when the customer responds to the outbound email. ie., when their email is appended to the outbound email sourced ticket and the status is changed to Open.



You may not be able to see the outbound sourced tickets in the ticket list view because your default ticket views do not include closed tickets by default. Hence, you can filter tickets by source - outbound email and create a custom ticket view to access such tickets.



Once the customer responds to the outbound email,




Here is a list of all the ticket fields that you will need to fill out while you send an outbound email: 

  • From - You can choose to send the email from any support email configured under Admin > Channels > Email.


As an agent, you may manually modify the 'From email address' by selecting a different support email option from the dropdown menu on the new email page. 


If you would like to automatically customize the From email section when an agent clicks on the new email option, you can make use of the Customize From Email Address application (Admin > Support operations > Apps > Customise From email address)  to customize the From email address based on certain ticket field conditions.



If any support address is added under Admin > Channels > Email but is not showing up in the new email page > From section, 


  1. Check if the support address is verified. Only verified support addresses can be used to send outbound emails from Freshdesk.
  2. If you are using marketplace apps like the Customize From Email Address app, check the configuration under Admin > Support operations > Apps > Manage apps > App settings.


  • To - The recipient of the email can be an existing contact or a new one. Please note that new customer email addresses will be added as contacts automatically. You can only send an email to one recipient currently.

  • CC & BCC - You can CC and BCC multiple existing/new contacts from your helpdesk.

  • Subject - The outbound email cannot be sent out without a subject. Hence, this is a mandatory field that needs to be filled to be considered as the subject of the outbound email-sourced ticket.

  • Email body - You can add the content of the email, format, and include images if necessary. The agent signature can also be modified in the email body.

  • Properties - Once you hit send, Freshdesk will send the email to the recipient and also convert this conversation into a ticket. So the new email page will have the ticket properties (ticket fields) that can be filled.

Note: All the mandatory ticket fields will be shown initially in the new email page and if you want to fill in any other ticket fields, please click on 'Show more fields' in the same page.


To create another outbound email, select the checkbox Send another before you hit the Send button fir the existing new email.



Note: If you have configured Multiple products (available from the Pro plan) in your helpdesk, the 'Product' field will not be visible on the Outbound Email page. Once the ticket is created, the 'From' address associated with the specific product would automatically take the corresponding 'Product' name.

Limits on the outbound email


  • You can send up to 30 outbound emails per day if you are on the Free plan.
  • If you are on Growth, Pro, or Enterprise plans, there are no limits to the number of outbound emails you can send in a given day. 
  • If your account is in a trial state under any plan, then you can send up to 5 outbound emails per day.


To limit spam attacks, we have implemented restrictions on the number of outgoing emails that can be sent hourly. Please get in touch with us at support@freshdesk.com if:


  1. You see a banner with the error message: "Your account has crossed the maximum hourly limit for outgoing emails."

  2. The 'Send' button for "ticket replies" and "new outbound email" is disabled.



Frequently asked questions



1. I want to send emails to my customers in bulk. Can I do that and create separate tickets for every customer I send an email to?


Using the +New email option, you can send email only to one recipient and multiple CC/BCC emails at a time. If you want to send outbound emails to your customer base in bulk and create individual tickets for each of your customers, you can make use of the proactive outreach feature in Freshdesk to suffice your requirements.


2.  How do I get the number of outbound emails that agents send from my helpdesk? 


You can filter the outbound email-sourced tickets by the source filter - outbound email to get the ticket count in the ticket list view.  You can also achieve this via analytics reports and group the data by agents to get agent-specific ticket count. 


If you also want to understand the number of emails agents send over any tickets, you can make use of the 'Agent reply' metric in analytics reports to fetch the data accordingly. Here is an article for help.