Set Up Email Piping - Google

You can pipe support ticket reply emails into WHMCS with Google®.

  • Email piping and email importing use separate configurations and are distinct methods of importing email replies.
  • In WHMCS 8.1 and later, we recommend using email importing with Google. This allows you to use OAuth security with your Google account. For more information, see Set Up Email Importing with Google.

Set Up Email Piping with Google

To do this:

  1. Create your Google account.
  2. Verify your WHMCS installation’s domain with Google and complete the Google setup process.
  3. Log in to the Google Admin Console and create the email account that your support department will use.
    • Make certain that you use a different email account for each support department.
    • Enable IMAP and POP3. If the email account already contains mail, enable Enable POP for mail that arrives from now on to ensure that you do not import old email from before you set up email piping.
  4. Check to ensure that Imap-SSL/Pop3-SSL is enabled in your WHMCS installation’s PHP configuration.
    For help updating your PHP configuration, contact your hosting provider or system administrator.
  5. In the WHMCS Admin Area, go to Configuration () > System Settings > Support Departments.
  6. Create a new support department. Use the following settings for the hostname and port:
    • Hostname — pop.gmail.com
    • Port — 995
  7. Use your preferred method to create a cron job that runs the /crons/pop.php script every 5 minutes.

Workaround for SSL Handling

In some cases, your server may not handle SSL with POP3 correctly.

To work around this issue:

  1. Create another POP3 email account using a different domain name that is not in Google and does not require SSL.
  2. Forward your Google email account to that email address.
  3. In WHMCS, use POP3 to retrieve the email from the new email address.
google email-piping support-tickets

Last modified: June 14, 2024