---
title: "Email"
description: "Forward your support address to your agent, and it answers by email."
source: https://hiy.ai/docs/email
---

# Email

Forward your support address, like support@yourcompany.com, to your agent. It answers your customers by email, signed as itself, and anything it shouldn't answer lands in your [Inbox](/docs/conversations) for your team.

**Note:** Email is in early access. It appears under Channels in workspaces that have it.

## Set it up

Open **Channels**, find **Email** and press **Set up** (or **Add an email address**). Only an owner or admin can.

1. **Pick the agent** that answers this address, and type your support address. Only a published Support Agent that anyone can reach answers email.
2. **Copy your forwarding address**, which looks like `acme.k7q2mx@in.hiy.ai`. Only your forward needs it; your customers never see it.
3. **Forward your support address to it** in Gmail, Microsoft 365 or your own mail host, keeping a copy in your mailbox. Use a forward, not a rule that sends a new copy. Gmail sends a code to confirm the forward: it shows in the setup, and you paste it into Gmail yourself. Microsoft 365 blocks forwarding outside your company until an admin allows it.
4. **Send a test** from another address. The setup shows it arriving.
5. **Choose what the agent does**: answer and hand over when unsure, answer only out of your team's hours, or stay off.

The address shows **Live** once forwarded mail arrives.

## What your customers see

Replies come from your agent "via hiy", for example *Ava via hiy*, and your customer's reply goes back to your support address, so the conversation stays in one thread. The first reply says it is your AI assistant and, if your agent hands over to your team, that writing **person** reaches them; every reply ends with a short line saying so. You can set the name the replies sign for and add a sign-off under **Manage**. Sending from your own domain comes later.

A reply goes to the address that wrote to you. A different address in the email's Reply-To is ignored, even one on the same domain; only the sender's own mailbox is used (`jane+orders@gmail.com` is `jane@gmail.com`). So a help desk that sends from its own address and puts the customer in Reply-To gets the reply at its own address, and nobody can aim your agent at someone else.

**Try this door** under **Manage** shows the reply your agent would send to a question you type. Nothing is sent, and it is free.

## What goes to your Inbox

The agent stays silent and the email waits in your Inbox when:

- the customer writes **person** (they're told your team will reply by email);
- the agent is **off**, or set to answer only out of hours and your team is in;
- the email failed the sender checks that show it really came from that address;
- your team already has the conversation;
- an address, the whole workspace or hiy as a whole reached the limits below.

Until replying from hiy arrives, answer from your own mailbox: **Answer from your mailbox** in the Inbox opens a reply to the customer. Then press **Mark done**, and the agent answers that customer's next email again.

## Limits

- The agent never answers automatic replies, mailing lists, bounces or no-reply senders.
- One address takes up to 300 emails a day, and your workspace up to 2,000 answered emails a day; past that they are kept for your team, unanswered. If hiy as a whole reaches its own daily limit, mail is kept the same way.
- One sender (a `+tag` in an address makes no new sender) gets up to 5 replies an hour and 20 a day, and one conversation up to 3 replies an hour, before your team takes over.
- The agent reads the new text only, not the quoted history, signatures or attachments. Attachment names show for your team.
- Lookups and actions don't run on email.
- **Disconnect** under **Manage** stops answering. If mail arrived in the last day, you type *disconnect* to confirm, because mail still forwarded there is lost. The history is kept.