Run the agent on email — either a built-in CoPhrase inbound address, or your existing Gmail or Outlook inbox connected over OAuth.
Email is a channel like any other. The same agent, the same knowledge base, the same inbox — an inbound email becomes a thread, the agent replies, and a human can take over at any point.
There are two ways to connect it.
Route 1 — Built-in address
CoPhrase gives you an inbound email address. Point mail at it, and the agent answers.
How you'd actually use it: forward support@yourcompany.com to your CoPhrase address, or publish the address on a contact form. Mail arriving there is parsed, threaded, and handed to the agent. Replies go out from CoPhrase.
Threading is handled by encoding the conversation into the reply address, so a customer hitting "reply" lands back on the same thread rather than starting a new one.
Deliverability is a real project. For replies to reach inboxes rather than spam folders, the sending domain needs proper authentication set up (SPF, DKIM, DMARC). CoPhrase walks you through the DNS records; you have to actually add them. Bounces and spam complaints are tracked and the offending addresses suppressed, because continuing to mail an address that bounced is how a sending domain's reputation dies.
Route 2 — Connect Gmail or Outlook
Authorize CoPhrase on an existing mailbox over OAuth. Mail arrives in your inbox as usual; CoPhrase reads it, the agent replies, and the reply is sent from your address, in your existing thread.
This is the right route when:
- You want replies to come from the address customers already know.
- You want the thread to exist in your real inbox, not just in CoPhrase.
- You don't want to touch DNS or think about deliverability — the mailbox provider already handles that.
The tradeoff is scope: CoPhrase is reading a mailbox you also use, so be deliberate about which mailbox you connect. A shared hello@ or support@ inbox is the intended target, not someone's personal work email.
Setup
Pick a route
Built-in address if you want CoPhrase to own the mail path. Gmail/Outlook if you want the agent working inside a mailbox you already have.
Connect
Built-in: create the email channel, get your inbound address, and add the DNS records for the domain you want replies sent from.
Gmail / Outlook: authorize CoPhrase on the mailbox through Google's or Microsoft's OAuth flow, and grant it permission to read and send mail.
Route mail to it
Forward the address customers use, publish the CoPhrase address directly, or — for a connected mailbox — do nothing, because mail is already arriving there.
Pick the agent
Choose which agent answers, and decide whether it replies directly or drafts for approval. Email is a channel where approval mode earns its keep early — an email reply is a written record in a way a chat message isn't.
Capabilities
| Official | Yes — both routes |
| Ban / restriction risk | None. Deliverability risk instead, on the built-in route |
| Messaging window | None |
| Message length | No practical limit |
| Inbound attachments | Images and PDFs are read by the agent |
| Threading | Replies land back in the same conversation |
| Streaming replies | No — email is email |
Things to know
Email is slower, and that's fine
Nobody expects an email answered in four seconds. The agent can take its time, and a thread that sits for an hour awaiting a human isn't a failure state the way it would be in a live chat. Set your handoff expectations accordingly.
Multi-party threads. Email threads have CC lists. CoPhrase models an email thread as a conversation with multiple participants, each resolving to a contact — like a Discord channel, not like a one-to-one DM.
One person, two channels. A customer who emails you and later messages your WhatsApp is one contact, if the email address or phone number links them. Their qualification context carries across; their threads stay separate.
Signatures, quoted replies, and footers are noise in an email. They get stripped before the agent reads the message, so the agent isn't answering your own last reply back to you.