Email a Ready-Made Address
Every employee you hire gets a real email address the moment they start. Set an employee to Public, zero workspace access before outside people can use that address. Email senders are external contacts, so an email conversation never receives your private workspace context or permission to do workspace work.
TL;DR
Each employee owns a personal inbox on mail.sista.ai, ready the day you hire them. A public employee can reply to outside correspondence, but it cannot see internal context, use tools, or take workspace actions. The employee knows the request came from an external email sender and keeps that conversation separate from your workspace.
How It Works
Mailbox gives each employee a dedicated address on a single shared domain, plus-addressed per employee so every reply routes to the right thread. When mail arrives for a public employee, it is handled as an isolated outside conversation and answered from the same address.
- Ready on hire. The address is assigned automatically. You never create or configure it.
- Threaded email. Replies stay in the same email conversation, with the sender, subject, and earlier messages available to the employee in that thread.
- Separate external conversation. The email thread keeps its own context. It cannot open, reuse, or reveal a workspace member's private chat, internal memory, trained knowledge, connected tools, or account details.
- Clean bounces. A bounce auto-suppresses that one mailbox without touching your account email or any other employee.
What You Can Do
| Action | How it works |
|---|---|
| Email a public employee directly | Copy the address from Settings > Technical > Channels > Mailbox and send. It receives an isolated external reply. |
| CC on an existing thread | Add a public employee's address to an outside email thread. This does not give the employee workspace context or action access. |
| Do internal work | Use web chat or an authenticated API, webhook, MCP, or A2A connection. Do not send private workspace context through a public mailbox. |
| Copy the address | Each employee's address sits on the Mailbox panel with a one-click copy button. |
How to Set It Up
There is nothing to set up. Every employee already has an address, shown in the Mailbox drawer under Settings > Technical > Channels. Copy it, send an email, and you are done. If an address shows as pending, the shared mail domain is still finishing DNS verification, the address is reserved for that employee and starts delivering the moment it is live.
The Mailbox switch is a workspace-wide switch. It turns email delivery on or off for all employee mailboxes in the workspace. Each employee also has a Public, zero workspace access setting in their Profile. Private employees reject unauthenticated email; public employees accept it with no access to workspace data, memory, tools, or actions.
Mailbox is different from the Email Webhook channel. Mailbox is the ready-made personal address that works out of the box. Email Webhook is for routing mail from your own provider into an employee through an endpoint you configure, see the Email guide for that.
Tips and Tricks
- Use public email for outside correspondence. A public mailbox stays isolated from workspace context. Use authenticated web chat for internal work.
- One address per employee. Every employee has its own address, so mail lands with the right person and stays cleanly separated.
- Use web chat for big work. File uploads, long tasks, and the full execution timeline are best in the workspace. Mailbox is for quick, email-shaped requests.
- Do not request workspace actions by mailbox. A public email can never schedule sends, read documents, or take actions on your workspace.
Control every employee signature
Open Company -> Profile -> Email Signature to control the footer on every
mailbox reply. The default shows the employee's name, role, and Sistava link.
Use {name}, {title}, {email}, or {company} anywhere in your text when
you want that detail filled in for the employee who sends the reply. They are
optional, so a completely custom static footer works too.
The live preview shows a marketing-manager example before you save. If you remove a field by mistake, select Restore Sistava default. You can also ask any active employee in chat to update the shared email signature for you; the next mailbox reply uses the saved version automatically.
What It Costs
| Cost | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Token credits | Same as web chat. Billed per call the employee makes while reading and answering mail. |
There is no extra per-message fee for sending from the mailbox, you pay only for the work the employee does. Inbound mail is always free, you cannot control who emails an employee.
Outbound sending is still capped by plan to protect delivery for every workspace on the shared mailbox domain:
| Plan | Sends per day | Sends per month |
|---|---|---|
| Free | 10 total, one-time, never resets | Same 10-send bucket |
| Starter | 15 | 100 |
| Builder | 30 | 200 |
| Founder | 60 | 800 |
| Leader | 100 | 2,000 |
| Comp / Enterprise | Unlimited | Unlimited |
The Mailbox panel shows your remaining sends for today. Hitting the cap only blocks new outbound mail, receiving and web chat keep working.
Is It Safe
- Per-mailbox isolation. Each address belongs to one employee in one workspace. Mail to one never reaches another customer's employee.
- External-contact identity. Each inbound email carries an opaque, durable source identity. The sender has no workspace membership, internal-data access, or action authority.
- Private workspace stays private. Mailbox conversations cannot use workspace memory, trained knowledge, connected tools, account context, or a member's private chat history.
- Bounce containment. A bounce suppresses only that one mailbox and never affects your account email.
- Channel gate. The Mailbox toggle on the Channels page is the master switch. Turn it off and the addresses stop accepting mail.
Good to Know
- On from day one. Mailbox is enabled for every workspace by default, no plan upgrade needed.
- Replies come from the employee's address. Answers arrive from the same address you wrote to, so the thread stays clean.
- Text first. The employee reads the email body and replies in text. For files and rich work, use the web app.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Do I have to set anything up to email an employee? A: No. The address exists the moment you hire the employee. Copy it from the Mailbox panel and send.
Q: How is this different from the Email Webhook channel? A: Mailbox is a ready-made personal address that works out of the box. Email Webhook is for forwarding mail from your own email provider into an employee through an endpoint you set up.
Q: Will an emailed request show up in web chat? A: The email thread is recorded in the employee's mailbox history, but it stays separate from private workspace chat and memory. Put the information an employee needs in the email, or use web chat for internal work.
Q: Can I make only one employee reachable by email? A: Yes. In that employee's Profile, set external contact to Public, zero workspace access. Leave every other employee Private. The Mailbox switch still applies workspace-wide, and there is no approved-contact allowlist yet.
Q: What if the address shows as pending? A: The shared mail domain is finishing DNS verification. The address is already reserved for that employee and starts delivering as soon as it is live.
Q: What happens if I hit my mailbox send limit? A: New outbound mail from that employee waits until the cap resets, monthly on paid plans, never on Free. Receiving mail, web chat, and every other channel keep working, only sending is capped.