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Overview

Connect the mailbox your outreach is sent from. Emails go out through your real mailbox, so they look and thread like anything else you send, and replies come back to you. What is sent — who gets contacted, what each email says, how many days apart — is set up in Dashboard → Autopilot. A connected mailbox on its own never sends anything.

Setup

Go to Integrations → Email and click Add another mailbox (or connect your first one). The page shows how many mailboxes your plan allows — N of M mailboxes. Click Connect Gmail and approve access. Sending happens through your real Gmail account: no DNS to set up, best deliverability, native threading. Click Connect Outlook and approve access. Same as above, through Microsoft.

Option C — Your own domain

For a sending address on a domain you own that is not on Google or Microsoft. Click Set up a custom-domain address, enter the from name and address, then add the DNS records shown to your domain and click Check verification. DNS changes usually take a few minutes.
Personal mailbox domains (gmail.com, outlook.com, yahoo.com…) are rejected on this path — use the Gmail or Outlook buttons instead.
With a custom-domain address, replies land in your mailbox and CallPrep cannot see them, so sequences are not stopped automatically by an email reply. See Replies and bounces below.

Finish: your sender identity

Commercial email has to say who is sending it. Under Settings → Outreach → Email signature set your name, your company and a postal address, and optionally your photo or logo, phone and website.
Until the identity is complete, email steps are held — the dashboard shows an “Emails are on hold” banner with a link to the right card. LinkedIn, WhatsApp and Telegram are unaffected.
Every outreach email also carries a standard unsubscribe header, which mail clients turn into their own one-click unsubscribe button. You can add a visible opt-out as well: a P.S. in your own words (“just tell me and I’ll stop”) or a plain unsubscribe link. An unsubscribe stops every channel for that person, not just email.

Mailbox settings

Open a mailbox row to see its settings.

Warm-up

A newly connected mailbox starts at 5 emails on its first day and climbs by 5 a day until it reaches the daily limit you set. A brand-new address has no reputation to spend, and providers score the pattern: fifty cold emails on day one reads as a list. The row shows 5/day · warming up while this is happening, and how many days are left until the full limit. You can switch warm-up off if the address genuinely is not new to sending — an established domain, or a mailbox reconnected after being removed. CallPrep will warn you first and record the decision, because the cost of getting it wrong is the reputation of the address itself, not just one campaign.

How sending works

  • One mailbox per lead. A lead is assigned a mailbox when it enters a sequence and keeps it, so the whole conversation comes from one address.
  • Follow-ups thread. Later emails reply inside the first email’s thread, with a Re: subject, so the lead sees one conversation rather than five cold emails. This is a per-Autopilot setting.
  • First emails come first. When there is more to send than the daily limit allows, leads who have never been contacted are served before follow-ups — the capacity bar on the Autopilot page shows the split, and Upcoming sends shows the queue behind it.
  • One email per lead per day, regardless of how many steps come due.
  • Several mailboxes share the load. New leads are assigned to whichever mailbox has the most room, counting warm-up, pause state and role.

Replies and bounces

Replies. For Gmail and Outlook mailboxes, CallPrep notices a reply and stops the sequence (if the Autopilot has stop on reply on, which is the default). Out-of-office and auto-replies do not count as an answer. A reply logged on the HubSpot contact also stops the sequence, which is the safety net for custom-domain mailboxes. Bounces. A permanent bounce stops the email steps for that lead — other channels continue, since it is the address that failed, not the person. If more than 5% of a mailbox’s emails bounce permanently over a week (measured once it has sent at least 20), the mailbox is paused automatically and you get an email explaining why. Temporary delays do not count.

What CallPrep can read

The reading is used for one purpose: noticing that a lead answered, and that a message bounced. Only addresses that belong to a lead in a live sequence are matched — anything else is passed over and nothing about it is stored.

When a mailbox stops working

OAuth access can end without warning — a password change, a revoked grant, an admin policy. When that happens the mailbox is marked Disconnected, the dashboard shows a red banner, and you get an email asking you to reconnect. The other mailboxes keep sending in the meantime, at reduced capacity. A send that failed because the authorization was dead is retried after you reconnect — those leads are not skipped. If a send fails for another reason, the mailbox row explains it in plain language (a Google account without Gmail enabled, a domain not verified yet, rate limiting), with the provider’s own wording under Technical details.

Credits

Researching a lead costs one credit. Sending emails is free, and so is a skipped or rescheduled email. See Credits.

Frequently asked questions

On Gmail it can read headers only — who a message is from, to, its subject and date — never the body. On Outlook it can read everything except the body, attachments and previews. With a custom-domain sender it has no read access at all. It uses this to spot replies and bounces for leads in a live sequence.
It depends on your plan — the top of the Email page shows N of M mailboxes and hides the add button once you are at the limit. Reconnecting an address you already have never counts as a new mailbox, so you can always repair what you have. See the Billing page.
That is the warm-up ramp: 5 on day one, +5 each day until it reaches your daily limit. The row shows how many days are left. It can be switched off, but only do that if the address has an established sending history.
Your sender identity is incomplete. Commercial email must identify the sender, so email steps wait until your name, company and postal address are filled in under Settings → Outreach → Email signature. Other channels keep running.
No. Follow-ups are sent as replies in the first email’s thread, keeping one subject and one conversation. You can turn threading off per Autopilot.
Not on Gmail or Outlook: the reply is detected and the sequence stops, and the check is repeated right before each send. With a custom-domain mailbox CallPrep cannot see the reply — log the email on the HubSpot contact, or close the lead from the Autopilot’s Activity view.
More than 5% of its emails bounced permanently over the last week (counted once it has sent at least 20). That is a deliverability alarm, not a quota — check where the addresses came from before resuming. You will have had an email explaining it.
The mailbox marked Collect replies here. If a lead’s sequence is sent from a different mailbox, that address is used as the reply-to, so the conversation lands in one place.
Yes — that is what This mailbox sends is for. Set one to Imported leads only and another to Organic leads only, and bulk-list risk stays off the address you actually converse from.
Connect the mailbox you can sign in to. Aliases and shared mailboxes work only when the provider lets that account send as the address — if it does not, the send is rejected and the row will say so.
The person is added to your suppression list and every active sequence for them stops — on all channels, not just email. Suppression is permanent and is never cleared by a re-import.

Need help?

Contact us at hello@callprep.app and we’ll help you get your mailbox connected.