The built-in employee address is free and always on, but it sends as the employee, not as you. Connect your own Gmail or Outlook instead and an employee sends and replies from your real address, in your name, with no monthly sending cap on any plan.
The Personal Mailbox above gets an employee sending and receiving in seconds with zero setup, but it sends as the employee's own address, not yours. Connect your own Gmail or Outlook instead and an employee sends and replies from your real inbox, under your name, exactly as if you had typed the reply yourself.
It's the same underlying skill, reading a thread, drafting a reply, sending it, just pointed at a different inbox. Ask an employee to "reply to this client from my inbox" and it goes out from your connected Gmail or Outlook address, not the built-in one. The connection lives on your workspace, not on one employee, so once you connect it, every employee you've hired can use it. You never reconnect Gmail per hire.
There's no monthly sending cap on a connected inbox, on any plan, but every outgoing message from it still holds for your approval first. Reading is instant the moment you connect: an employee can open threads, search, and summarize your inbox without asking. Sending, replying, forwarding, or scheduling a send is different. Each one pauses for an approval card before it goes out, even if you've set that app's other actions to automatic. Nothing leaves your real address unattended.
Because an employee now has two mailboxes to choose from, it does not guess between them. Ask it to summarize your emails and it looks at your connected inbox; ask about its own inbox and it reads the built-in address instead. When you say something as open-ended as send this to Alice, and the context does not settle it, the employee asks whether you want that going out from your address or its own rather than picking one for you.
Setting the connection up is the same one-click authorization every other connected app uses. There is no app password to generate, no mail server to point at, no host and port to get wrong. Ending it is just as short: disconnect the account from your tools and the employee stops being able to send from it at all, immediately, without anything else to unpick.
The reason reading is open while sending waits comes down to what can be taken back. Reading a thread changes nothing, so making an employee ask permission for it would only slow down the summaries and searches you connected the inbox for. A sent email cannot be recalled, and it goes out wearing your name, so that side stays behind an approval card as a fixed rule rather than a preference somebody can switch off later.
Where the built-in Personal Mailbox sends from the employee's own address, a connected inbox sends from yours. Recipients see your real email, not a Sistava address, and replies land back in your actual inbox.
Connection is the same one-click OAuth used for every other app, Gmail, Outlook, or Zoho Mail, no separate mail server setup, and it authorizes once for the whole workspace, not once per employee.
The built-in address caps sending because it's shared, free infrastructure. Your own inbox has no such cap, so once connected, employees can send from it without hitting a monthly ceiling, on any plan.
Reading a connected inbox never pauses; an employee can dig through threads and summarize them freely. But send, reply, forward, and scheduled-send actions on Gmail or Outlook are always held for an approval card first. This is a fixed safety rule, not a per-tool setting you can turn off. Even where you've set that app to run automatically elsewhere, outgoing personal email still stops for your yes.
We also never mirror your full inbox into the platform. What's stored is a record of each successful send, reply, or forward the employee made through it, visible in the Inbox activity view, not a copy of your mail.
If you disconnect a Gmail or Outlook account, or the underlying permission lapses on the provider's side, the employee notices the next time it reaches for that tool. It works out what was depending on the connection, then gives you one plain heads-up, what stopped and what it blocks, instead of failing silently or nagging you about it.
If an employee asked you to connect an inbox mid-conversation and you do it later, it picks up exactly where it left off once the connection settles. No need to re-ask or repeat the request.
One OAuth connection, then any employee can use it
Connecting Gmail or Outlook uses the same one-click OAuth flow as every other connected app on the platform: you authorize access, the connection is stored against your account, and no password or app-specific setup is needed on either side.
Once connected, an employee's mail tools point at that inbox instead of the built-in address. Sending, replying, and forwarding all run through the same actions Gmail and Outlook expose to any authorized app, so a sent message looks and behaves like one you sent by hand: it lands in your Sent folder, threads correctly, and replies come back to your real inbox.
You choose when it is used. An employee still has the free built-in address available for anything that does not need to look like it came from you, and switches to your connected inbox only when you or a task specifically calls for sending as you.
An existing conversation with a client or prospect stays in one thread instead of splitting into a second, employee-addressed one. The employee drafts and sends the follow-up from your connected inbox, so the recipient sees the same address they have always emailed.
The free built-in address caps monthly sends to protect shared infrastructure. A connected Gmail or Outlook inbox has no such cap on any plan, so an employee running a larger outreach or follow-up batch is not throttled by the platform.
For a negotiation, a support escalation, or any reply where being handled by a person (not a tool) matters to the recipient, sending from your own address keeps that impression intact while the employee still does the reading and drafting.
Because the message is sent through your real account, it lands in your Sent folder and threads correctly like anything you typed yourself. Your inbox stays the complete record of the conversation, with nothing to reconcile later between two different sending addresses.
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| Anything sent on your behalf goes out from a different address, so the client sees a new name appear in a thread they have had with you for months. | The reply goes out from your real address, lands in your Sent folder, and the thread carries on where it was. |
| A free shared sending address has a monthly ceiling, so a larger follow-up batch stalls partway through. | Your own inbox carries no platform sending cap, on any plan, so the batch finishes. |
| Letting something send from your inbox means trusting it to decide, on its own, what goes out under your name. | Reading is open, and every send, reply, forward, and scheduled send holds for your approval first, whatever else that app is set to. |
| Wiring a mailbox up means app passwords, server names, and port numbers, and doing it again for each new employee. | One authorization, once, for the whole workspace, and every employee you hire afterwards can use it. |
The built-in address sends as the employee (e.g. [email protected]) and is capped by plan. A connected Gmail or Outlook sends as you, with no cap on any plan.
Gmail and Outlook, via the same one-click OAuth connection used for other apps. Zoho Mail is also supported under the same rules.
No, both can be active. Connect your inbox when you want an employee to send as you; the built-in address stays there as the free fallback.
No. Reading is unblocked the moment you connect, but every send, reply, forward, or scheduled send from a connected Gmail or Outlook always holds for an approval card first, regardless of that app's other settings.
The employee notices on its next attempt, tells you once what stopped and what it depends on, then waits. Nothing sends from a revoked or broken connection.
It asks when the context does not make it obvious. A request to summarize your emails points at your connected inbox, and a question about its own inbox points at the built-in address. For an open-ended send, the employee checks which address you want it to go from rather than choosing for you.
No. Connecting Gmail or Outlook uses the same one-click authorization as every other connected app. There is no app password to generate, no mail server to configure, and no host or port to enter.
No. Your mailbox is not mirrored into the platform. What is kept is a record of each send, reply, or forward an employee made through the connection, visible in the Inbox activity view, rather than a copy of your mail.
Send from Gmail or Outlook is part of Ways you talk to them.
Chat in the app with live reasoning, speak to your AI voice agent over a call, message on Slack or WhatsApp, send an email, or embed a widget on your website. Every channel connects to the same AI agent with the same memory and capabilities. Switch channels mid-conversation and your employee picks up right where you left off.