HEY Email Not Working — Access & Setup Fixes
HEY, built by 37signals (the company behind Basecamp), is deliberately unlike most email providers on this site. It's built around its own workflow — The Screener, The Imbox, The Feed, Paper Trail — rather than the standard folder-and-flag model most mail apps expect. That design choice explains most of what trips people up.
1. Sign in at the right place
- Go to app.hey.com directly, or open the official HEY app on iOS or Android.
- Use your full @hey.com address, or your custom domain address if you're on HEY for Domains.
2. "Incorrect password" or repeated sign-in prompts
Use HEY's own password recovery flow rather than retrying repeatedly. If you're on HEY for Domains and manage multiple people under one account, double-check you're resetting the password for the correct individual mailbox, not the account owner's.
3. App won't load or sync
- Force-close and reopen the app — this resolves most temporary stalls on mobile.
- Try app.hey.com in a browser to check whether the problem is app-specific or account-wide.
- Update the app through the App Store or Play Store — HEY's workflow-heavy interface tends to need more frequent updates than a simpler mail app would.
4. Trying to set up HEY in Outlook, Thunderbird, or Apple Mail
If you're looking for IMAP or SMTP server settings for HEY, they genuinely don't exist — not for personal accounts, not for HEY for Domains, not on any plan. This isn't a missing feature; it's intentional. HEY's core features (The Screener, merged conversation threads, Paper Trail) can't be represented through the standard IMAP folder model, so 37signals built HEY exclusively around its own apps and webmail instead.
If a unified inbox alongside your other IMAP accounts is a hard requirement, HEY genuinely isn't going to offer that — a provider like Fastmail, Zoho, or Outlook.com would be a better fit for that specific need.
5. Mail seems to be missing entirely
Before assuming anything's broken, check whether the sender was screened. This is HEY's biggest source of "where did my email go" confusion — see our dedicated guide on how the Screener works and how to recover a screened sender.