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Hosted Inbox: one-click email support

Written by Joseph Russo, Principal Architect, Networks and Tech, AskVault · Reviewed by Allison Chan
Last updated: · 4 min read

Rolling out. Rolling out The hosted address is built and switched on, but setting it up from the Channels page is not open yet. Contact [email protected] for access. Until then, use the Email Assistant with your own mailbox.

What it is

Hosted Inbox is the second of two email surfaces on AskVault. The first, Email Assistant, connects to a mailbox you already own (Gmail, Outlook, custom IMAP) and replies from your address via your SMTP. Hosted Inbox flips the model: AskVault hosts the address for you. Inbound mail goes through our transactional mail provider's inbound parse webhook, gets processed by the same AI pipeline, and replies go out from the same hosted address.

Use cases:

  • Lean startups that haven't set up [email protected] yet: get a working address today, keep it as long as you want, redirect later if you want.
  • One-click pilots: every workspace can spin up its own address without touching DNS.
  • Self-serve customers who can't get a corp IT ticket through to enable IMAP on their workspace inbox.

How it differs from the Email Assistant

Hosted Inbox trades a custom domain address for a zero-setup one. The table below lines up the two surfaces side by side.

Email Assistant (IMAP)Hosted Inbox
Inbound deliveryIMAP poll (60 second interval)Provider webhook (instant)
OutboundCustomer SMTPProvider API
Address[email protected]{slug}@askvault.email
Setup time5 to 15 minutes (app passwords plus IMAP/SMTP)A few minutes (pick a slug, then forward)
Customer's brand visibleYes, replies are from their domainThe hosted domain is visible
DeliverabilityInherited from their SMTPSent from AskVault's own sending domain

Both surfaces share everything else: ticket-mode RAG, the source-citation contract, the low-confidence escalation gate, tone plus signature plus per-skill triggers, and the same settings panel.

Setup (customer-side)

  1. Dashboard, Channels, Hosted Inbox (once it is open for your account; see the note at the top of this page).
  2. Type a slug (acme, acme-support, team, etc). The form pings the backend as you type; it goes green when available.
  3. (Optional) Enter a Reply-To address: where customer follow-up replies should go. Leave blank to keep the conversation inside AskVault.
  4. Claim address. The claim is instant.
  5. Send test to your own email to confirm DKIM/SPF alignment is correct.
  6. Paste the address (for example [email protected]) on your "Contact us" page, in email signatures, in marketing, anywhere customers might want to reach you.

That's it. The next email to that address triggers the agent.

Forward from Gmail

Forwarding from Gmail is rolling out and is not available yet. Until it is, connect Gmail with an app password. Once forwarding is on, you will not need an app password: you claim a hosted address, then have Gmail forward a copy of incoming mail to it, and your agent answers from the hosted address.

  1. Claim your address as above and copy it.
  2. In Gmail open Settings, See all settings, Forwarding and POP/IMAP, then Add a forwarding address. Paste your AskVault address and confirm.
  3. Gmail emails a confirmation code to that address. AskVault does not answer that email; it shows the code (and Google's confirmation link) on the setup page while it waits. Enter the code in Gmail, or open the link, to finish. Only an email that Google's mail servers really sent is shown. A message that just claims to come from Google is ignored, so nobody else can change the code you see.
  4. Back in Forwarding and POP/IMAP, choose Forward a copy of incoming mail to your AskVault address and click Save Changes.

Things to know:

  • Google Workspace admins can block automatic forwarding. If the option is missing or greyed out, ask your admin to allow it, or connect with an app password instead.
  • Replies come from your @askvault.email address, not from your Gmail. Set a Reply-To if you want customers' follow-ups to reach your team directly.
  • Forwarded mail is matched by the AskVault address it was delivered to, not by the "To" line the customer wrote.
  • Forwarding is rolling out and is not available yet. Use an app password in the meantime.

Reply from your own domain

Replying from your own domain is rolling out behind a flag and is not switched on yet. Once it is on:

  • Verify your domain once under Settings, General, Sender address: enter the address you want replies to come from (for example [email protected]), add the DKIM record AskVault shows to your domain's DNS (the Return-Path record is recommended), then click Check verification.
  • Hosted Inbox replies then come from that address instead of your @askvault.email address. The setup page says which address replies are sent from.
  • Until the domain is verified, nothing changes. Replies keep coming from your hosted address. If DKIM stops verifying, or the mail provider refuses the address, the reply is sent from your hosted address instead, so the customer still gets an answer.
  • Personal mailbox domains such as gmail.com cannot be used. You cannot publish DKIM records for them. To reply from a Gmail address, connect with an app password.
  • A domain can be set on one workspace only.

How it answers

Same pipeline as the Email Assistant ticket-mode path:

  1. Provider posts the parsed email to our webhook.
  2. We verify the request's credentials and resolve the hosted address it was delivered to (its {slug}) to a workspace.
  3. The body is stripped of quoted reply history; we keep just the new question.
  4. We derive a canonical thread ID from Message-ID / In-Reply-To / References so replies to the same thread share a conversation but a NEW subject from the same sender starts a fresh conversation.
  5. Pre-RAG escalation triggers fire (keyword match, max-replies-per-thread cap): both short-circuit before any LLM cost.
  6. RAG retrieval over your indexed knowledge.
  7. Low-confidence gate: if the top retrieved chunk's relevance is below your configured confidence floor, the LLM is never called. Instead a polite "I've passed this to our team" reply goes out and the conversation is marked unanswered so a human sees it.
  8. Otherwise: LLM call with your tone-tuned system prompt, source-cited answer, signature appended at the transport layer.
  9. Outbound goes via the provider's send API from the same hosted address.

Hosted Inbox and the IMAP Email Assistant share the same ticket-mode email pipeline, so behaviour stays consistent across both surfaces. Future channels that should behave like ticket-mode inboxes (Slack DMs, WhatsApp inbound) can reuse it.

Settings

Hosted Inbox uses the same settings panel as the Email Assistant. That covers response mode (ticket / conversation), tone (formal / friendly / casual), signature, system-prompt override, confidence floor, always-escalate keywords, max replies per thread, custom escalation reply, and an optional always-CC address. See the Email Assistant reply behaviour settings for the full walkthrough of each field.

What lives where

  • Your slug is reserved to your workspace and is globally unique.
  • Your reply behaviour, tone, signature, and escalation settings are stored against your workspace, using the same encrypted configuration shape as the IMAP channel.
  • Inbound mail arrives on a webhook that only accepts the mail provider's credentials.
  • Outbound replies are sent from your hosted address via the provider's send API.

Loop prevention

Every outbound reply carries Auto-Submitted: auto-replied, so well-behaved autoresponders and other AI assistants ignore it. Replies to one conversation are also capped by Max auto-replies per thread (5 by default), after which the thread goes to your team.

Unlike the IMAP Email Assistant, the hosted address does not yet filter inbound automatic mail (Auto-Submitted), mailing-list mail (List-Id, List-Unsubscribe) or bulk mail (Precedence: bulk / list / junk) before answering. Keep the hosted address off mailing lists.

Bounces and spam complaints

Bounce and spam-complaint handling is rolling out behind a flag and is not switched on yet. Once it is on:

  • A reply that bounces permanently (the mailbox does not exist, or our mail provider has stopped sending to it) puts that address on your workspace's suppression list. Temporary problems, such as a full mailbox or an out-of-office reply, do not.
  • A reply the recipient marks as spam puts that address on the list too.
  • Your agent no longer emails an address on the list. A new email from that address gets no reply and is not added to your conversations. If your always-CC address is on the list, replies still go out without the CC.
  • The list belongs to your workspace. Each event is matched to the workspace that sent the reply, never guessed from the recipient's address. Addresses on the list are stored hashed and encrypted, and bounce and complaint events are logged without the address.
  • If three people mark your replies as spam, you get a dashboard notification so you can review your agent's email answers. AskVault does not pause your agent for you.

Things to know:

  • The mail provider keeps its own list of addresses that bounced or complained, shared by every @askvault.email sender. It can refuse a reply to an address that complained about another sender's mail, even though that address is not on your workspace's list.
  • There is no way yet to see the list or remove an address from it. Releasing your hosted address deletes the list.

Delivery

Inbound and outbound mail run through an established transactional email provider, with SPF and DKIM aligned to the askvault.email domain so replies land in inboxes rather than spam. Inbound webhooks are authenticated before a message reaches your agent.

Not available yet

  • Custom domains: replying from your own domain is rolling out; see Reply from your own domain. Receiving mail at your own domain is not available yet.
  • HTML email rendering: replies are plain text.

Pricing

Hosted Inbox follows the same plan rules as the Email Assistant (Growth and above). Each AI-generated reply counts as 1 message against your plan's monthly quota: 6,000 messages a month on Growth, 15,000 on Business, and an amount set by contract on Enterprise. See the pricing breakdown for the full plan table.

When you run out of messages

When your plan's messages are used up, your agent stops answering emails to your hosted address. Today, an email that arrives in that time is not answered, and topping up later does not bring it back.

Keeping those emails is rolling out behind a flag and is not switched on yet. Once it is on:

  • An email that arrives while you are out of messages waits instead of being dropped.
  • Your agent answers it once you have messages again, whether from a top-up, an upgrade or your next billing cycle. Waiting emails are answered oldest first, a few at a time, and each answer counts as 1 message as usual. Waiting email is checked every minute; when many accounts have waiting email it can take longer.
  • A failed answer is not retried. If answering a waiting email fails, it is not tried again. If the same email is delivered twice while you are out of messages, it still waits only once. If it is delivered again after your messages are back, your agent answers that copy too, so your customer can get two replies.
  • Emails wait for up to 35 days, then they are deleted unanswered. At most 500 emails wait at a time; past that, new ones are not kept.
  • A waiting email is stored encrypted and belongs to your workspace only. If you release your hosted address before it is answered, it is not answered.
  • A waiting email does not appear in your Inbox until your agent answers it.
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