FAQ & troubleshooting

The usual reasons, in order:

• You haven't connected an AI yet. Airbox needs your API key to do anything. Set one up under Connections
• You're emailing from an address Airbox doesn't allow. By default only you (the account owner) can use your address. Send from the email you signed up with, or add other senders in the dashboard. Auto-forwarded mail counts as coming from the original sender, so newsletters need their own allowlist entry — see below
• Replies are turned off. Check the “Email a reply back” toggle on the inbox, and make sure you didn't include !noreply in the subject
• The reply went to spam. Check your spam folder and mark it “not spam” so future replies land in your inbox
• You used an old address. If you rotated your address, the previous one stops working immediately
• Rate or usage limits. Your AI provider may be rate limited, or you may have reached your limit for billing, credits, or tokens. We'll try to notify you if we can, but you may need to check your provider's website or dashboard for more information

Every email Airbox receives shows up in Logs & Activity with its status — that's the fastest way to see what happened.

Almost always the sender allowlist. Mail you auto-forward from Gmail (or any other client) still arrives from the newsletter — the forwarding hop doesn't make it look like it came from you. If Restrict senders is on for that inbox and the newsletter's address isn't on the list, Airbox rejects it: no reply, and nothing in that day's briefing.

Two ways to fix it, on the inbox in your dashboard:

• Add the sender. Put the newsletter's From address in the allowlist field — newsletter@example.com. On Pro and Team you can allow a whole domain with *@example.com
• Or uncheck Restrict senders. Any sender can then trigger that address, so it suits an inbox you use only for forwarding. SPF/DKIM spoofing checks still apply

Not sure which address to add? Open the newsletter and copy the address it was sent from — that's the one Airbox checks, not the list's display name. Logs & Activity shows rejected mail with the sender it saw.

A plain send or forward defaults to “summarize and list action items.” To ask for something specific, put the instruction in a trusted place — either the email subject line, or the first body line with command symbols (@ # ! -), or a (* … *) block at the top. Writing “please translate this” in regular text will generally still work — but your instructions are clearer to your AI when you use Airbox command verbs (or inside (* … *)) count as instructions. That's what keeps forwarded emails from hijacking your AI.

Subject: @claude translate this to Spanish

—or at the top of the body:—

(* @claude #reply draft a polite decline *)

---------- Forwarded message ----------

See the examples for copy-paste patterns.

Yes — in a few ways, and it's worth being clear about which is which:

• It replies to you by email — the core loop. You email your address, your AI's answer comes back, threaded.
• It can email you on a schedule — turn on scheduled briefings and Airbox sends you one synthesized digest daily, weekly, or monthly at a time you pick. This is the answer to “have the AI email me every morning” (a Pro/Team feature).
• It can send email to other people as an action — connect a send-email MCP server and your AI can compose and send mail while handling a request.

Honest limits: Airbox won't cold-email people on its own — every send is your scheduled briefing, a reply to mail that cleared your sender allowlist, or a tool your AI runs while handling such a message. And sending to arbitrary addresses today runs through an MCP server you connect (so use one you trust). Full walkthrough of all three in Have your AI send email.

Yes. Airbox connects you to your own AI account, so your AI provider bills you directly for what their model does, depending on your provider, your plan, and your usage — which could be, for example, a penny or two per email. Currently, Google AI provides a free tier for basic usage, which is one way to start using Airbox at no additional cost. Airbox's own plan covers our service, like our email infrastructure, routing, automation, improvements, security, and other features. You're never paying twice for the same thing, and with the Airbox free plan and Google AI's free tier, you can get started at no cost.

No, and this trips up almost everyone. ChatGPT Plus is the subscription for the chat website and app. Airbox (like any tool that talks to OpenAI) needs API access, which is a separate thing with its own key and its own pay-as-you-go billing. The good news: API usage is cheap for typical email volumes, and our ChatGPT setup guide walks you through getting the key step by step.

Your email is sent only to the AI provider you choose — no one else — and your API keys are encrypted in storage and never shown in replies or logs. Only senders you allow can use your address, and you can rotate an address instantly if it ever leaks. For the full picture, see the security guide.

Either works. Forward when you've already received the email and want the AI to act on it. BCC your Airbox address while composing a new email when you want a copy processed quietly without the other recipients seeing it. Not sure what these mean? The glossary has plain definitions.

Any of them work — pick the one you already have an account with, or the one you trust most. You can connect more than one and choose per email. Claude, ChatGPT (OpenAI), and Gemini all have beginner-friendly setup guides under Connections.