Let Your AI Answer Emails from Your Mailbox
Email Integration
Connect the mailbox you already use (for example info@yourcompany.com) and your AI assistant answers incoming emails with the same trained knowledge it uses in the website widget. Replies either land as ready-to-send drafts in your mailbox for a human to review, or go out automatically, clearly marked as AI-generated.
Prerequisites
- An email mailbox with IMAP and SMTP access — this covers most providers (IONOS, STRATO, ALL-INKL, Hetzner, GMX, WEB.DE, T-Online, mailbox.org, Posteo, Gmail via app password)
- The mailbox credentials, exactly as you would enter them in a mail program like Thunderbird or Outlook
- A WebChatAgent chatbot on the Standard plan or above with trained data (the free trial includes the email channel)
Not supported: Microsoft 365 and Outlook.com mailboxes — Microsoft no longer allows password access via IMAP.
Quick Start
- Open your chatbot in the WebChatAgent dashboard and select Integrations → Email.
- Enter your mailbox address. For known providers the server settings fill in automatically — usually only the password is left to type.
- Run the connection test. It verifies both connections and detects your Drafts and Sent folders.
- Choose the reply mode — start with Create drafts (default).
- Enable the channel and save.
- Send a test email to the connected address from another account. Within a few minutes the reply appears as a draft in your mailbox.
Reply Modes
Create drafts (default). The AI writes a complete reply and saves it as a draft in your mailbox. You open it in your normal mail program, adjust it if needed, and send it yourself. The original email is marked so you can spot answered mails at a glance.
Send directly. Replies go out automatically, with a copy in your Sent folder. Every automatic reply contains a note that it was generated by an AI assistant (EU AI Act). When the AI is unsure — no knowledge match, or the sender explicitly asks for a human, a complaint, or a legal matter — it falls back to a draft instead of sending. Enabling this mode requires an explicit confirmation in the dashboard.
How It Works
The mailbox is checked about every 5 minutes. Only emails that arrive after you enable the channel are answered — the existing backlog is never touched.
Every reply knows the full correspondence history with that sender. On a sender's first contact, the assistant can also read the earlier emails already in your mailbox with that address (received and sent) as context, so it knows what was discussed before it was connected. This can be turned off with the Include previous correspondence setting; those old emails are only read, never answered.
The assistant mirrors the sender's language and form of address (formal or informal) and keeps it consistent across the conversation. Your configured signature — plain text or your existing HTML signature with logo and links — is appended to every reply automatically.
What Is Never Answered
The channel skips, automatically and silently:
- Newsletters and mailing-list messages
- Auto-replies and out-of-office messages
- Delivery failure notices (bounces)
- Mails from no-reply addresses and from the connected address itself
- More than 5 mails per hour from the same sender (loop protection)
Provider Notes
- Gmail / Google Workspace: requires an app password (Google account → Security → App passwords), not your normal Google password. Two-factor authentication must be enabled.
- ALL-INKL: the server settings use your customer-specific
kasserver.comhost — detected automatically. - Microsoft 365 / Outlook.com: not supported (no IMAP password login).
Troubleshooting
The activity list at the bottom of the settings shows every processed email with a status and reason:
| Status / reason | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Draft | Reply was placed in your Drafts folder |
| Sent | Reply was sent directly |
| Draft: human requested | Sender asked for a person, or a complaint/legal matter — draft instead of automatic send |
| Draft: no knowledge match | The AI found nothing in your trained data — draft instead of automatic send |
| Skipped: automatic mail / mailing list / delivery failure | Loop protection, see above |
| Sender limit reached | More than 5 mails per hour from this sender |
| Message quota reached | Your plan's monthly message allowance is used up |
If the mailbox connection fails (for example after a password change), the status badge turns red and you receive a notification email. After repeated failures the channel pauses itself — saving the settings with working credentials re-enables it.
Privacy
Mailbox credentials are stored encrypted and are used exclusively to read and send emails for this channel. Email conversations appear in your dashboard like website chats and follow the same retention rules. Details are covered in the privacy policy and the data processing agreement (DPA).
Availability
The email channel is available on Standard, Premium, and Enterprise plans and during the free trial. Answered emails count toward your monthly message allowance like chat messages.