From vs Reply-To: where replies go

The From address says who sent the email. Reply-To changes where answers land. See how each choice affects the Distro Inbox and stop-on-reply.

Updated October 11, 20263 min read

The From address tells the prospect who the email is from. The Reply-To address, if you set one, tells their mail app where to send an answer. With no Reply-To, replies go back to the From address.

For Distro the difference matters, because Distro reads replies from the mailbox of the Google account that sent the email. A reply that lands anywhere else is invisible to it.

The default: no Reply-To

You send from maya@yourcompany.com
The prospect clicks Reply
The answer goes to maya@yourcompany.com
It lands in the mailbox that sent it
Distro sees it: Inbox, reply stats and stop-on-reply all work

This is how most cold email should run. The From address is a sender you picked in the campaign, either your Google account's own address or a verified alias of it. See What is a sending identity?

With a Reply-To address

You can add a Reply to row to a campaign (in the first email, open the ⋮ menu on the From line and choose Reply to). Distro then adds that address as the Reply-To on every email in the campaign, follow-ups included. Step-by-step instructions are in Change your From name and Reply-To address.

Whether Distro still sees replies depends on where that address delivers:

Reply-To address	Does Distro see the reply?
Empty (replies go to the From address)	Yes
An alias of the same Google account that sent the email, so mail arrives in the same mailbox	Yes, as long as the reply arrives in that mailbox
A different mailbox, even one you also connected to Distro	No. Distro matches a reply only inside the mailbox that sent the email
A shared or team address that isn't a Google mailbox connected to Distro	No
An address that forwards into the sending mailbox	Possibly. Forwarding can change the message, so test it first

What happens when Distro can't see a reply

If replies go somewhere Distro doesn't read:

the conversation never appears in the Inbox,
the campaign's reply numbers stay at zero for that person,
follow-ups don't stop, because Distro doesn't know the person answered. They keep getting the rest of the sequence.

That last point is the costly one. Someone who already replied and then receives "just following up" looks careless. If you must use a separate Reply-To, watch that mailbox and pause or remove people yourself when they reply.

When a Reply-To makes sense

A teammate handles replies, and the Reply-To is an alias that delivers into the sending mailbox.
You send from a personal address but want answers to reach a role address in the same Google account.

When it doesn't:

To route replies to a different person's mailbox. Connect that person's Google account in Sending accounts and send from it instead.
To a CRM or ticketing address. Distro won't see those replies and can't stop the sequence.

A Reply-To that differs from the From address is also one more unusual signal in a cold email. Leave it empty unless you need it.

Test before you launch

Create a small test campaign from the sender you plan to use, with the Reply-To set.
Add one of your own addresses at another provider as the only recipient.
When the email arrives, reply to it.
Check that the reply appears in Outreach → Inbox within a few minutes.

If it doesn't appear, remove the Reply-To or change it to an address that delivers into the sending mailbox. For replies that end up in an unexpected place, see Replies are going to the wrong mailbox.