Email & Inbox Sync in Attio
Email sync is the quiet engine under everything else in Attio. Connect your inbox and calendar once, and the system logs who you contacted, when, and how often, against the right People and Company records, with no manual entry. That logged activity is what powers the relationship graph, keeps pipelines current, and feeds your reports. This page explains how the sync works and how to set it up so the data underneath stays trustworthy.
What connects, and what it captures
Attio connects to Gmail and Outlook inboxes and to Google and Microsoft calendars. Once a team member authorizes their account, Attio captures:
| Source | What Attio logs |
|---|---|
| Sent and received messages matched to the People and Companies on the thread | |
| Calendar | Meetings and attendees, logged against the matching records |
| Frequency and recency | How often and how recently each contact heard from your team |
The match is automatic. When you email a founder, Attio finds or creates that Person record and attaches the interaction, so the timeline fills in as you work rather than after.
How sync powers relationship data
Every logged email and meeting is a data point about who knows whom. Aggregate them across the whole team and you get the warm-path answer: open a target Company and see which colleagues have real history there, and how recent it is. That is the foundation of relationship intelligence, covered in depth in relationship intelligence in Attio. The rule is simple: the more inboxes connected, the more complete the graph. Connect only partners and you miss the warm paths your associates and operating partners hold.
Logging without lifting a finger
Manual CRM updates are where dealflow data goes to die. With sync on, the activity timeline on each record fills itself, so a partner opening a deal sees the last email, the last meeting, and the full thread without anyone typing a recap. You decide privacy at the inbox level: many firms log activity metadata across the team while keeping message bodies visible only to the record owner, so coverage stays high without exposing private content.
Sequences and outbound
Attio supports email sequences for outbound and follow-up. Build a multi-step sequence, enroll a filtered list of People, and Attio sends from your connected inbox and logs every reply against the record. Pair sequences with the source-tagged lists from deal sourcing in Attio to run outbound and keep the responses attached to the right targets. Replies pause the sequence, so a warm hand-raise never gets another automated nudge.
Set it up so the data holds
- Connect every team member's email and calendar during onboarding, not just leadership.
- Turn on enrichment so interactions match to one canonical Person and Company instead of splitting across duplicates.
- Agree on a privacy setting up front, so the team trusts the sync and keeps it on.
- Build a view of contacts with no activity in 30 days to surface relationships going cold.
How this compares to Affinity
Affinity pioneered this auto-capture for investors, and its logging works the moment inboxes connect. Attio captures the same email and calendar signal and matches it to records the same way. The difference is the model on top: Attio lets you shape custom objects around the activity, and it runs about $14,720 a year cheaper than Affinity Scale. During a migration, Affinity relationship signals do not export as a portable score, so we rebuild them with Attio's email and calendar sync. A typical migration runs about 15 hours and around $3,000, and we map People, Companies, Lists and saved views, Notes, Opportunities, and Files.
See what your firm saves switching to Attio →FAQ
- Which email and calendar providers does Attio support?
- Gmail and Outlook for email, and Google and Microsoft calendars. A team member authorizes their account once and Attio begins logging activity against the matching records.
- Does email sync expose the content of my messages?
- You set privacy at the inbox level. Many firms log activity metadata across the team while keeping message bodies visible only to the record owner, so coverage stays high without exposing private content.
- How does inbox sync power relationship intelligence?
- Each logged email and meeting shows who contacted whom and how recently. Aggregated across the team, that data reveals the warmest internal path to any person or company.
- Can I run email sequences in Attio?
- Yes. Build a multi-step sequence, enroll a filtered list, and Attio sends from your connected inbox and logs replies against each record. A reply pauses the sequence automatically.
- Does my Affinity email history transfer?
- Affinity's relationship signals do not export as a portable score, so we rebuild activity capture with Attio's email and calendar sync. We also migrate Notes, People, Companies, and the rest. Email contact@dialed.tech for a free test migration.