Email is where most of the relationship actually happens. Reps negotiate, answer questions, and move deals forward in Outlook. When those emails never make it into Salesforce, your CRM tells only half the story. Logging Outlook emails to Salesforce is what keeps the pipeline complete: it gives managers accurate activity data, gives the next rep full context on a handover, and gives your reporting something real to measure.
The way teams do this shifted recently, because the old default is going away. Salesforce for Outlook is retiring, and the question every admin now has to answer is: what's the best way to log Outlook emails to Salesforce in 2026? This guide walks through every option: manual logging, the Outlook Integration add-in, Einstein Activity Capture, and third-party tools. It also covers how to pick the one that fits how your team actually works.
Your options for logging Outlook emails to Salesforce
There are four broad approaches, and they sit on a spectrum from "fully manual and free" to "automatic and paid." None is universally best. The right choice depends on whether you value control, automation, reporting fidelity, or process execution.
Manual logging
The simplest method needs no tool at all: a rep copies the email content, opens the relevant record in Salesforce, creates a Task or logs an activity, and pastes it in. It's free and it produces clean, standard records you can report on however you like.
The problem is that it's slow and error-prone. Manual logging depends entirely on the rep remembering to do it, finding the right record, and copying everything across accurately, in the middle of a busy day. In practice, the emails that get logged are a fraction of the emails that get sent, and the ones that slip through are often the important ones. Manual logging works as a fallback, but it rarely scales as a team-wide habit.
The Outlook Integration add-in
The Outlook Integration is Salesforce's official web-based add-in, and it's free with most Salesforce licenses. It adds a sidebar to Outlook that surfaces the Salesforce records matching the email you're viewing (Contacts, Leads, Opportunities, Cases) and lets you log the email to one of them with a "log to Salesforce" click straight from the sidebar.
This is a big step up from pure copy-paste: matching is automatic, the record is right there, and the logged email lands as a standard activity record. The logging itself is still manual, though. The rep has to choose to click "log to Salesforce" for each message. And, importantly, the Outlook Integration does not run Screen Flows. It's built for email logging and record visibility, not for executing custom processes from the inbox. You can read more about how it works on the Outlook integration page.
Einstein Activity Capture
Einstein Activity Capture (EAC) takes the opposite approach: it captures email and calendar activity automatically in the background, with no per-email action from the rep. Once an admin configures sync rules and users connect their accounts, EAC matches messages to Salesforce records and surfaces them on the activity timeline. There's no sidebar to click and no reps to train on logging. It's roughly $25/user/month as a standalone add-on, or included with Sales Cloud Einstein.
There's one caveat worth understanding clearly, because it surprises a lot of teams. Captured activity isn't stored as standard Task records in your org's database. Instead, it lives in Einstein Activity Capture's own activity data store and is shown on the activity timeline. That's fine for giving reps and managers visibility into what's happened. But because the data isn't standard records, it has real limits for standard reporting, list views, and anywhere your processes rely on standard activity records. It's a genuine convenience-versus-reporting trade-off, not a bug, and it's the single most common reason teams pair EAC with another tool. We cover the details on our Einstein Activity Capture comparison.
Third-party tools
Beyond Salesforce's own options, a category of third-party add-ins logs Outlook email to Salesforce and adds capabilities the native tools don't. Two are worth calling out for different reasons.
FlowRunner runs Salesforce Screen Flows directly inside Outlook (and Gmail) in the context of the email you're reading, and logs in context as standard records. Instead of just relating an email, a rep can launch a Flow to qualify the lead, update the opportunity, or capture a structured activity. These are the same Flows your admins already built in Salesforce, surfaced where the work happens. That makes it the option to reach for when logging an email should also kick off a process, not just file a copy. FlowRunner starts at €12/user/month plus €50/org/month.
Cirrus Insight is a broader sales engagement suite (email logging plus templates, send and link tracking, scheduling, and analytics) priced at roughly $29-$59/user/month. It's a fit for teams that want an all-in-one engagement layer over Outlook rather than focused Flow execution. See how the two compare on our Cirrus Insight comparison.
The options side by side
The clearest way to see the trade-offs is to line the options up on the questions that actually decide the choice: is logging automatic, does it produce standard records, can it run Screen Flows, what does it cost, and who it suits best.
| Option | Automatic? | Stored as standard records? | Runs Screen Flows? | Cost | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manual logging | No | Yes | No | Free | Occasional, low-volume logging |
| Outlook Integration | No (manual click) | Yes | No | Free with most SF licenses | Sidebar logging & record visibility |
| Einstein Activity Capture | Yes | No (EAC data store) | No | ~$25/user/mo or with Sales Cloud Einstein | Hands-free capture & timeline visibility |
| FlowRunner | No (in-context) | Yes | Yes | From €12/user/mo + €50/org/mo | Running Screen Flows & logging in context |
| Cirrus Insight | No (manual click) | Yes | No | $29-$59/user/mo | All-in-one sales engagement suite |
How to choose
There's no single best tool. There's a best fit for your priorities. Work through these questions in order:
- How much do you log, and how reliably? If volume is low and occasional, manual logging may be enough. If you need consistent coverage across a team, you need a tool. Manual habit won't hold.
- Do you need it to be automatic? If compliance or completeness matters more than anything and you can't rely on reps clicking, Einstein Activity Capture's background capture is the strongest fit, provided you've accepted its storage trade-off.
- Do you need standard records for reporting? If your reports, list views, or automations depend on standard activity records, weigh EAC's data-store model carefully. The Outlook Integration, manual logging, FlowRunner, and Cirrus Insight all produce standard records.
- Should logging also run a process? If logging an email is really the moment to qualify a lead or update a deal, FlowRunner is the only option here that runs your Screen Flows in context.
- Do you want a wider engagement suite? If you're after templates, tracking, and sequences alongside logging, a platform like Cirrus Insight covers more ground than the focused tools.
For many teams the answer isn't one tool but a deliberate pairing: for example, Einstein Activity Capture for hands-free visibility plus a tool that writes the standard records and runs the processes you report on. The key is to decide based on the reporting and process columns, not just the price.
Frequently asked questions
Does the Outlook Integration log emails automatically?
No. The Outlook Integration add-in is a manual tool. It adds a sidebar to Outlook that surfaces matching Salesforce records, and you click a "log to Salesforce" button to relate the email to a Contact, Lead, Opportunity, or Case. It does not capture email in the background. If you want automatic, hands-free capture, that is what Einstein Activity Capture is for. The Outlook Integration is free with most Salesforce licenses but relies on the rep remembering to log each email.
Why doesn't Einstein Activity Capture create standard Task records?
Einstein Activity Capture stores captured emails and events in a separate Salesforce activity data store and surfaces them on the activity timeline, rather than writing them as standard Task or Event records in your org's database. This is by design. The trade-off is that, because the data isn't held as standard records, it can't be reported on with standard report types, used in some list views, or referenced everywhere standard activity records can be. Many teams accept this for the convenience of automatic capture, but it's the most common reason organizations add a second tool for the activity they specifically need as standard records.
Can I run a Salesforce Screen Flow when logging an email?
Not with Salesforce's own tools. Neither the Outlook Integration nor Einstein Activity Capture runs Screen Flows. FlowRunner is built specifically for this: it runs your Salesforce Screen Flows directly inside Outlook (and Gmail) in the context of the email you're reading, so a rep can qualify a lead, update an opportunity, or log a structured activity as standard records without leaving their inbox. FlowRunner starts at €12/user/month plus €50/org/month.
What happens to email logging when Salesforce for Outlook retires?
Salesforce for Outlook is scheduled for full retirement in December 2027, extended from the original June 2024 date. The retirement is driven by Salesforce's own legacy technology (its dependency on Internet Explorer 11, Apex, and Lightning) and by Salesforce consolidating customers onto modern products, not by Microsoft deprecating desktop add-ins. When it retires, the email-logging job moves to the modern options: the Outlook Integration add-in for manual logging, Einstein Activity Capture for automatic capture, or third-party tools like FlowRunner and Cirrus Insight. Planning that transition before the deadline avoids a gap in your activity data.