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Native inbox rendering & IMAP sync

The live view is the universal fallback — a hosted web page recipients open with one tap. Native inbox rendering goes a step further: by connecting external IMAP email accounts, MailInApp-sent emails render live inside your Mailbox, no click-through required.

You can connect multiple IMAP accounts (Gmail, Outlook / Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, or custom IMAP mail servers) and view synced messages alongside custom domain receiving in a single Mailbox at /dashboard/mailbox. A connected account is a full mail client, not a read-only viewer: folders, search, compose/reply/forward, attachments, signatures and filters all work the same way they would in Gmail or Outlook itself.

Connecting an IMAP account

  1. Go to Mailbox (/dashboard/mailbox) in the dashboard.
  2. In the left sidebar under Connected Inboxes, click + Add (or + Connect IMAP inbox).
  3. Select your provider preset (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, or Custom):
    • Gmail: Requires a 16-character Google App Password (generated in your Google Account Security settings) if 2-Step Verification is enabled.
    • Outlook / Yahoo / Custom: Enter your IMAP server address (e.g. outlook.office365.com), port (993), email, and password.
  4. MailInApp auto-fills each provider's known SMTP host and port alongside the IMAP ones — the same credentials authenticate both, so there's nothing extra to enter to enable sending.
  5. Click Connect. MailInApp validates credentials with a test connection before saving.
  6. Once connected, your account appears in the sidebar and messages are pulled into the unified list. Anything sent through MailInApp carries an Interactive badge.

An account connected before sending support was added has no saved SMTP credentials yet — reconnect it once from the sidebar to enable composing and replying from it.

Folders

Each connected account syncs its Inbox plus every folder IMAP flags as a special use — Sent, Drafts, Trash, Junk/Spam and Archive — shown as a real per-account folder rail in the sidebar, instead of one flat list. Select All Mail to see a unified chronological feed across every connected account's Inbox, or click into one account's folder to browse just that.

Viewing & interacting

  • Opening a message with an Interactive badge renders its blocks (polls, quizzes, carousels, forms, etc.) live, using the same rendering engine as the hosted live view — votes and submissions post back to the interactions endpoint without leaving your Mailbox.
  • If the sender has an opt-in sender profile and it was public when they sent the message, a small verified card — avatar, name, and a verified-domain badge — appears above the rendered message, linking to their public profile. It's built only from the message's own cryptographically signed manifest, never from anything a message merely claims about itself, so it can't be spoofed by a look-alike.
  • Messages without a MailInApp manifest render in a secure, sandboxed HTML frame, and never show a sender profile card.
  • Message bodies and attachments are always fetched live on demand from your IMAP server and are never stored in MailInApp databases — opening a message doesn't imply downloading its attachments either; those are only pulled when you click one.
  • Opening an unread message marks it read automatically, the same way any mainstream mail client behaves.

Message actions

Hover any message in the list, or use the toolbar in the reading pane, to:

  • Star or unstar a message (\Flagged).
  • Mark read / unread (\Seen).
  • Archive or Delete — moves the message to that account's Archive or Trash special-use folder (a real IMAP move, never a destructive expunge). An already-archived or -trashed message shows Move to Inbox instead.

Compose, reply & forward

Click Compose in the sidebar to write a new message, or use Reply / Forward from an open message's reading pane:

  • A Send as picker spans every connected IMAP account plus every address on your verified domain mailbox, so one Compose button covers both backends.
  • Replies are threaded correctly (In-Reply-To/References) so they land as a reply in the recipient's own mail client, not a disconnected new message.
  • Cc and Bcc fields are available on every compose, reply and forward.
  • Replying to a message uses the same full rich-text editor as the domain mailbox (bold/italic/underline, headings, lists, blockquotes, links, a fixed color palette, and tables) instead of a plain textarea — reply pre-fills a quoted On <date>, <sender> wrote: ... block above your signature, fully editable or deletable before you send. Every reply still carries a plain-text part alongside the HTML for text-only clients.
  • For providers that don't save a Sent copy server-side during SMTP submission (Outlook, Yahoo, most custom servers — Gmail already does this on its own), MailInApp appends the sent message into that account's Sent folder for you.

Composing a brand-new message from a connected IMAP account is still plain text for now — the compose window explains this when an IMAP account is selected. Attaching files on a reply, however, works the same way it does from a domain mailbox address (see Attachments below).

Reply with an interactive email

Formatted text not enough? Click ✨ Reply with interactive email on an open message from a connected account to open the full studio editor with that message attached as context, just like the domain mailbox's own version of this — pick an existing project or start a new one, make last edits, and send it as this specific reply.

It behaves the same way: sent as a transactional email (no unsubscribe footer, no "open interactive version" line, no open-tracking pixel), and interactions on it are recorded anonymously/rate-limited rather than attributed to a contacts-list row. One difference from a domain-mailbox reply: there's no persisted Sent using: <project name> badge or thread history here, since connected-account messages are never stored in MailInApp's own database — only fetched live from your IMAP server on demand. The Sent-folder copy (or the recipient's own inbox) still carries the full rendered email either way.

Attachments

Attachments on a message you're viewing are never pre-downloaded — MailInApp fetches just the file you click, streamed directly from your IMAP server on demand. Nothing is cached or stored server-side.

Attaching your own files to a reply works the same way as the domain mailbox: pick files before sending, up to the same size/count limits. Composing a brand-new message from a connected account doesn't support attachments yet.

Search

The Mailbox search box is account- and folder-aware: searching while viewing one account's folder searches that folder live on the IMAP server (subject, sender, recipient and body); searching All Mail searches every connected account's Inbox. Results replace the visible list until you clear the search — nothing is limited to messages you've already synced locally.

Signatures

Give each connected account its own signature (Settings → the ✎ icon next to an account in the sidebar) — it's inserted automatically above quoted text on every reply, forward and new compose from that account.

Filters

Each connected account can have its own small rule list (the ⚙ icon next to an account): match on From or Subject containing some text, then mark read, flag, or move to Archive/Trash. Rules are evaluated in order against newly-synced Inbox mail only — the first matching rule wins. There's no drag-to-reorder yet; delete and re-add a rule to change its priority.

Managing multiple accounts

  • You can connect as many IMAP accounts as you want.
  • In the sidebar, select All Mail to view a unified chronological feed of all accounts, or click a specific connected inbox to filter by that account and browse its folders.
  • Click Sync in the sidebar header to trigger an instant on-demand sync across all connected accounts.
  • Hover over an account in the sidebar and click ✕ to disconnect it anytime — all synced metadata for that account will be immediately removed.

Bulk actions, keyboard shortcuts & notifications

These work the same way across both connected IMAP accounts and your domain mailbox:

  • Check the box on any message row to select multiple, then Archive, Delete, Mark read or Mark unread all of them at once from the toolbar that replaces the search box while anything is selected.
  • Keyboard shortcuts (ignored while typing in a text field): j/k move to the next/previous message and open it, e archives the open message, # deletes it — both advance to whichever message takes its place, the same "archive and move on" flow Gmail uses.
  • Toggle the bell icon in the sidebar header to opt into desktop notifications for new mail — a per-browser permission, checked roughly every 30 seconds while enabled, skipped for whatever's already visible in the open tab.