Email in a CRM is a mail client built directly into the customer management system: every letter is stored next to its invoices, acts, tasks and project history instead of living in a separate Outlook window. We built this client for our own CRM and explain how it works and what it gives a small business.
The problem: email lives apart from the money
The classic small-business picture: agreements live in email, invoices in a spreadsheet or 1C, tasks in a messenger, work history in folders on a disk. When a client asks “what about our invoice?”, a person opens three windows and reconstructs the picture from memory.
The worst part is that the connection is lost exactly where the money is: the letter with bank details sits in one place, the invoice in another, and the act that “we think we sent” cannot be found at all. Receivables grow quietly, because nobody sees the correspondence and the payments side by side.
What email in the CRM looks like
A “Mail” tab on the dashboard, next to the chats. On the left — a single list of letters from all connected mailboxes: incoming and outgoing, search by subject, text and address, filters by mailbox and direction. On the right the letter itself opens: full text, attachments (invoices, bank details, scans — all downloadable in one click) and a Reply button.
The reply goes straight from the CRM: the subject is kept, the letter joins the thread, and the assistant’s signature is added automatically. No separate mail app needed.
Every letter knows its context
The key part is the “CRM links” block under the letter’s text. For an open letter the system shows:
- The client and their card — who is writing, from which addresses, in which other channels the conversation exists;
- Invoices and acts — with numbers, amounts, payment and signature statuses, the closest to the letter’s date first;
- Mentioned documents — if the text contains an invoice number, it is highlighted as a separate row with its status;
- The client’s tasks — open and closed, as of the conversation;
- Project sessions — who worked with this client and when;
- The thread — the whole conversation on the subject in chronological order; clicking a row opens any letter of the chain.
That is the difference between “having email” and “having memory”. The question “what did we promise this client in September?” is solved with one click, not with archaeology across folders.
Several mailboxes — without an IT department
Mailboxes are described in a single config file: address, IMAP/SMTP server, how many days of history to fetch. Passwords are stored separately, in a protected environment. A new mailbox connects in a minute and immediately appears in the filters.
The “known/unknown” filter is shared across all mailboxes: a client writing to any company address is recognized from the contact base. Unknown senders are not lost — they are saved with a “lead” mark and triaged separately, while newsletters and robots are filtered out automatically.
Technically: plain text files as the source of truth
All incoming and outgoing mail is stored as ordinary Markdown files with metadata: sender, client, subject, attachments. The same layer feeds the chats, client cards and finance widgets — which is why a letter, an invoice and a task are always consistent: they are read from one storage instead of being synced between three systems.
Attachments are stored next to the letters, in folders by date and sender. The history can be backed up, exported or moved by simply copying files — no export formats or paid extracts.
Who this fits
The scheme is designed for small business and IT services: when you have dozens of clients rather than thousands, and losing a single promise hurts. We work across Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan — from Moscow and Saint Petersburg to Kazan, Almaty and Minsk — and all our own client correspondence runs exactly this way.
If your email, invoices and tasks live in different windows — write to us, and we will show how this looks on real data.
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