Connect the address your customers already write to (like support@yourstore.com) by forwarding it to Aide. Every email becomes a conversation in your Aide inbox, customer replies stay in the same conversation, and your team answers from Aide without customers noticing a change of address once your domain is verified.
How it behaves
- Setting it up: Email is a channel. In Channels > Email, an Owner or Admin enters the support address and an optional sender name. Aide gives the store its own forwarding address to copy, with step-by-step instructions for Gmail and Google Workspace, Google Groups, Outlook and Microsoft 365, and other email providers.
- Google Groups: if your support address is a Google Workspace group, add the forwarding address as a member instead. There's no confirmation email, and messages the group relays "via" the support address are still matched to the customer and answered automatically.
- Gmail's confirmation: Gmail asks you to confirm a new forwarding address by email. That email goes to Aide, and the confirmation code and link appear on the settings page within a minute or two, so there's no need to dig for it. The page checks for it automatically.
- Checking it works: "Send a test email" sends a message to your support address. When it comes back through forwarding, the address shows as Connected. The first real customer email connects it too.
- New emails: each new email from a customer starts a conversation, with its attachments. Images placed inside the email show where the customer put them. Attachments are private: their links expire after an hour (reopening the conversation refreshes them), and files other than images and PDFs download instead of opening in the browser. When a customer replies to the thread, the reply joins the existing conversation, including replies to conversations that were closed recently.
- Alerts: a new email notifies the conversation's team, or everyone when it has no team, with a toast and a chime ("New unassigned conversation in my team", now with sound on by default). A customer reply notifies the assignee, or the same people when nobody has it yet. Spam and newsletters stay quiet.
- Not every email becomes a conversation: bounces, out-of-office replies and auto-replies are ignored, and senders on your spam block list land in Spam so you can rescue them. Newsletters and bulk mail come in but are never answered automatically.
- Replies before your domain is verified: replies go out from Aide's shared sending address with your sender name, and "reply to" set to your support address. When the customer answers, their email goes to your mailbox and is forwarded back into the same conversation.
- Replies after your domain is verified: Channels > Email lists the DNS records to add at
your domain provider, each with a copy button and its status. Press "Check again" once
they're in. When the domain is verified, replies are sent from your support address itself.
The records are three CNAME records that sign your email, plus an MX and a TXT record on a
sendsubdomain so bounces come back to Aide and SPF passes. - Free email addresses: replies for Gmail, Outlook.com, Yahoo and similar addresses always use Aide's shared sending address, since those domains can't be verified.
- Several mailboxes: add more than one support address; each gets its own forwarding address.
- Who can set it up: Owners and Admins. Agents see who to ask.
- On the Channels page: Email sits next to Aide Chat and your helpdesks, and shows as Enabled once a support address is added. Your inbox then lists Email as a channel you can filter conversations by.
Also in this change
- Aide Chat's settings moved under Channels too, so every channel Aide runs is set up from the same place. The Aide Chat shortcut in the sidebar stays, and old links still work.
For developers
- New
GET /v1/email-mailboxes,POST /v1/email-mailboxes(supportAddress, optionaldisplayName),GET /v1/email-mailboxes/:id,POST /v1/email-mailboxes/:id/testsandPOST /v1/email-mailboxes/:id/domain-verifications, for Owners and Admins. - They return an
email_mailbox:inboundAddress,supportAddress,displayName,forwarding(statusofpending,confirmation_pendingorverified, Gmail'sconfirmationCodeandconfirmationUrl,testSentAt,verifiedAt,lastReceivedAt),sender(from,replyTo,usesOwnDomain) anddomain(name,status,recordswithtype,name,value,priorityandstatus,verifiedAt,lastCheckedAt). - Errors:
409 already_existsfor an address that's already set up,422 domain_not_verifiablefor free email domains,503 email_unavailablewhen email isn't configured.