Connecting happens entirely through your provider — a free Gmail account, Google Workspace, Outlook.com or Microsoft 365. Sortmail never sees your password, because it never asks for one.
Once you approve, Sortmail sorts the last 30 days of your inbox for free and shows you where each message would go and why, so you see your own inbox sorted before you pay anything.
What happens when you click connect
You are sent to Google or Microsoft, who ask whether you want to give Sortmail permission to read and label mail in your mailbox. You approve or decline there, on their page, not ours. If you approve, they hand us a token that we encrypt immediately and store; we never receive your credentials.
Why the permission comes later than sign-in
You can create a Sortmail account and look around before granting anything. We ask for the mailbox permission only at the step where you turn sorting on. That way you can read exactly what we are asking for, with the explanation in front of you, rather than being confronted with a consent screen before you know what the product does.
If your administrator blocks it
Workspace and Microsoft 365 administrators can prevent staff from connecting third-party apps. If that happens you will land on a screen that says so, rather than a generic error. The fix is a conversation with your administrator; we cannot override their decision, and would not want to be able to.