Email channel — answer your support inbox

Your agent can answer inbound support email. You connect your own support mailbox — the agent reads new mail over IMAP and answers from your address over SMTP. Nothing to forward, no Kelma address in the loop: replies genuinely come from support@yourco.com. Everything lands in your Inbox alongside your other channels.

Two modes

• Auto-reply — the agent answers the sender by email automatically, threaded so it groups into one conversation in their mail client.
• Draft for approval — nothing is sent to the customer. Instead the agent emails you a suggested reply to review and send, so a human is always in the loop.

Connect your mailbox

On the Email tile (Channels tab → Email), set the reply-from name (e.g. "Acme Support"), then enter your mailbox details:

• Incoming (IMAP) — your mail host's IMAP server and port (usually 993), your email address as the username, and its password. Optionally set Only answer mail sent to — if the mailbox catches several addresses (support@, sales@, info@…), enter one and the agent answers only mail addressed To or Cc to it; leave it blank to answer everything the mailbox receives.
• Outgoing (SMTP) — the SMTP server and port (465 for SSL, or 587 for STARTTLS). Leave the username and password blank to reuse your incoming login — the usual case. From address is optional too: leave it blank and replies come from your login address; set it only if you send as a different address (a send-as alias or a shared mailbox), which some hosts and relays require.

Press Connect. Kelma runs a live test in both directions immediately, so a wrong server or password fails right there with your mail host's own reason — the channel never silently goes dark.

Your host's IMAP/SMTP settings are on their help pages (search "<your host> IMAP settings"). Common examples: Hostinger imap.hostinger.com / smtp.hostinger.com, most cPanel hosts mail.yourdomain.com.

Gmail & Microsoft

• Gmail / Google Workspace — turn on 2-Step Verification, then create an App password (Google account → Security → App passwords) and use that as the mailbox password. Your normal password won't work over IMAP. Servers: imap.gmail.com / smtp.gmail.com, ports 993 / 465.
• Microsoft 365 / Outlook.com — not supported yet. Microsoft has retired password sign-in for IMAP/SMTP in favour of OAuth; a one-click Microsoft connect is coming.

Good to know

• New mail is checked every few minutes — email isn't instant like live chat, by design.
• Replies are sent through your SMTP, from your address, threaded so they continue the same conversation in the customer's mail client. The reply goes to the sender only — never to anyone the customer CC'd — so the agent never spams a thread or triggers a loop with another mailbox.
• Email replies are properly formatted — bold, links, lists and even a table when the agent needs one (like an itemised quote) — sent as HTML with a plain-text fallback, so nothing shows up as raw **asterisks**. In your Inbox the same reply reads as clean formatted text. Short channels stay plain: SMS and WhatsApp/Telegram get concise, unformatted messages.
• Replies look like normal email replies: the same subject (Re: …), threaded to the customer's message so it groups into one conversation in their mail client, with their previous message quoted underneath ("On , wrote: …"). This holds whether the AI answers automatically or you take over from the Inbox and type the reply yourself — same subject, same thread, same quote.
• When you reply as a human, the sender name shows both you and the business — e.g. "Marco G. - Kelma" (your display name and the reply-from name) — so the customer sees a real person answered. The AI's own replies just show the business name.
• Human takeover works from the inbox — your reply is emailed to the customer from the same mailbox.
• Junk is filtered, not answered. The agent only reads your Inbox, so anything your mail host files as spam is never seen. On top of that it ignores bounces, auto-responders, no-reply/notification senders, newsletters and mailing-list mail (List-Unsubscribe / List-Id / bulk headers), and mail from your own address — so it won't waste replies (or tokens) on machines and marketing. Keep your host's spam filter on; it's the first and best line of defence.
• Email answers consume the same monthly message tokens as website chats.