You open a lead in Odoo CRM. You click "Send Email". The mail composer opens — but the recipient field is empty. The email address of the person you're trying to reach is right there on the lead, yet Odoo doesn't fill it in.
If this sounds familiar, you're not alone. It's one of the most common frustrations for Odoo Community CRM users.
What Actually Happens
In Odoo Community Edition, the mail composer on leads and opportunities uses the follower mechanism by default. When you click "Send Email" on a lead, Odoo doesn't send the email to the lead's contact. Instead, it sends to the followers of that record.
This makes sense for internal communication — notifying colleagues about updates. But for sales, it's completely wrong. You want to email the lead, not the followers.
The result:
- Empty recipient field when composing from a lead
- You have to manually type or search for the contact's email every time
- If you forget and hit send, the email goes to followers (often just yourself)
- With dozens of leads per day, this adds up to significant wasted time
Why Odoo Works This Way
Odoo's mail system was designed around the concept of "chatter" — the message thread on every record. Messages in the chatter go to followers. This works well for internal collaboration: someone follows a sales order, they get notified about changes.
But CRM leads are different. When a sales rep clicks "Send Email" on a lead, they expect to email the contact person. That's the natural action. The follower model breaks this expectation.
In Odoo Enterprise, the CRM module has additional logic that handles this better. But in Community Edition, this feature is missing. It's one of those gaps between Community and Enterprise that isn't obvious until you hit it.
The Workarounds (And Why They're Bad)
Sales teams using Odoo Community typically resort to one of these workarounds:
1. Manually Add Recipient Every Time
Open the composer, click the recipient field, search for the contact, select it. Every. Single. Email. With 30+ emails a day, that's 30 unnecessary steps.
2. Add the Contact as a Follower First
Some teams add the lead's contact person as a follower before sending. This makes the email go to the right person, but it also means the contact receives all future chatter notifications on that lead — which is rarely what you want.
3. Email from the Contact Instead of the Lead
Go to the contact record, send from there. But then you lose the CRM context — the email doesn't appear in the lead's history in the way you'd expect.
4. Use a Different Email Client
Give up on sending from Odoo entirely and switch to Gmail, Outlook, or another client. This defeats the purpose of having email integrated in your CRM.
None of these are acceptable for a sales team that needs to move fast.
The Fix: CRM Direct Email Module
We built a free Odoo module that fixes this: CRM Direct Email.
What it does is straightforward: when you click "Send Email" on a lead or opportunity, the module automatically sets the recipient to the lead's contact email address. No configuration. No workflow changes. The mail composer opens with the right person already filled in.
How It Works
The module extends the mail composer to detect when you're sending from a CRM lead. It reads the contact email from the lead record and pre-fills the recipient field. That's it.
- No new buttons — works with the existing "Send Email" action
- No configuration — install and it works immediately
- No data changes — your leads, contacts, and existing emails stay exactly as they are
Sender Selection
The module also adds the ability to choose which email address you send from. If your team uses multiple sender addresses or SMTP servers (e.g., one via Brevo, another via IONOS), you can select the sender before sending.
This is useful for:
- Teams with multiple domains — send from the right brand
- Deliverability — rotate senders to avoid spam filters
- Personal vs. company addresses — choose per email
Installation
The module is available on the Odoo App Store for Odoo 18 Community and Enterprise. It's free and open-source (LGPL-3).
Requirements:
- Odoo 18
- CRM module installed
- Mail module installed
After installation, no setup is needed. Open any lead, click "Send Email", and the recipient is pre-filled.
What About Odoo Enterprise?
Odoo Enterprise handles this differently through its own extended CRM module. If you're on Enterprise, you likely don't have this problem — or at least not as severely.
This module specifically addresses the Community Edition gap. If you're running Odoo Community for your CRM (which many companies do to avoid the per-user Enterprise licensing), this module gives you the email behavior you'd expect.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does it change how existing emails work? No. It only affects the initial recipient field when composing a new email from a lead. All existing emails, threads, and follower notifications remain unchanged.
Does it work with opportunities too? Yes. Both leads and opportunities (CRM pipeline stages) are supported.
Can I still send to other recipients? Yes. The recipient is pre-filled but not locked. You can change it, add CC/BCC, or modify anything before sending.
Does it affect the chatter/follower system? No. The follower mechanism remains untouched. The module only changes the default recipient in the mail composer.
Is it compatible with other CRM modules? Yes. It's designed to work alongside other Odoo CRM extensions, including our Outreach Campaigns module for multi-step email sequences.
The Bigger Picture
This email recipient issue is one of several limitations in Odoo Community CRM that affect daily sales work. If you're building an outbound sales process in Odoo, you'll likely also run into:
- No email sequences — you can't automate multi-step follow-ups
- No campaign tracking — no way to track which leads are in which campaign
- No sender rotation — can't distribute emails across multiple sender addresses
We've written about how to address these challenges:
- Cold Email & Outreach in Odoo CRM — why traditional CRM can't handle outbound and what to do about it
- Odoo CRM Outreach Module — email sequences, follow-ups, and campaign tracking natively in Odoo
Conclusion
The missing email recipient in Odoo Community CRM is a small but persistent problem that affects every sales rep, every day. The workarounds are tedious and error-prone.
CRM Direct Email fixes it with zero configuration. Install the free module, and the mail composer works the way you'd expect it to: click "Send Email", and the recipient is already there.
CRM Direct Email is available as a free module on the Odoo App Store. For questions or feedback, get in touch.
