Email Is Now a Channel in Synkra Chat: Website Chat and Customer Email in One Inbox

Synkra Chat started with website chat as its only channel. It now supports email as well, so a business can handle customer emails and website conversations in the same inbox. Customers keep emailing the address they already use, and the business replies from Synkra Chat.

This post explains what the email channel does, how it connects to an existing mailbox without a password, and what to know before setting it up. The full step by step instructions are in the Synkra documentation.

What the email channel does

Once an email address is connected, every customer email that reaches it becomes a conversation in the Synkra Chat inbox. A reply sent from Synkra reaches the customer as a normal email, and it appears to them as a reply to their original message.

Several details are handled for you. The sender's email address becomes a contact record, or updates an existing one. The subject line becomes the conversation title. The body becomes the message, and any attachments are downloaded and stored with it. Synkra uses the email's own threading information, so when a customer replies, the reply stays under the original conversation instead of starting a new one. The full history of messages, attachments and replies can be searched from a single view.

The email channel also works with the AI features in Synkra Chat. Reply suggestions, conversation summaries and the AI Agent work on email conversations in the same way they work on website chat. Email sits alongside the existing channel in one inbox, and the documentation lists WhatsApp and SMS as channels planned for later. They are not available yet.

How it connects without a password

The email channel uses forwarding. You add a rule in your existing mailbox that forwards customer emails to a unique Synkra address, and Synkra creates the conversations from the forwarded copies. Customers never see the Synkra address, because they continue to email your normal business address.

Because the connection depends only on forwarding, Synkra does not ask for your mailbox password and does not request access to your Google or Microsoft account. Synkra sees only the emails you choose to forward and cannot read the rest of your mailbox. Replies go through the Synkra reply box, and Synkra does not send replies on your behalf without your approval.

Setting it up

You need a business email address that already receives customer mail, and admin access to that mailbox so that you can add a forwarding rule. Setup takes a few minutes and has four stages.

1. Create the inbox. In Synkra Chat, go to Settings, then Inboxes, and choose Add Inbox. Pick Email, then Forward from my existing email. Give the inbox a name such as Support, enter the business address your customers use, and create the channel. Synkra then generates a unique forwarding address for that inbox.
2. Add the forwarding rule. In your mailbox settings, add the Synkra forwarding address as a forwarding destination. In Gmail this is under the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab, and in Outlook on the web it is under Mail and then Forwarding. Other providers usually place it under Rules, Filters or Forwarding.
3. Complete the verification. Many mailbox providers send a verification email when you add a forwarding address. That email is addressed to the Synkra address, so it arrives as a new conversation in your Synkra inbox. Open it, follow the confirmation link, and confirm on the provider's page. An amber banner appears on the inbox Configuration tab until verification is complete.
4. Send a test. Send an email from a different address to your business address. It should appear as a new conversation within about thirty seconds. If it does not, check that the forwarding rule is saved and enabled, that verification is complete, and that the test email was not filtered into spam.

The documentation has the full instructions for each provider.

What the email channel counts against

Emails through the email channel use the same monthly pool as notification emails and outbound replies from Synkra. Each customer email received uses one credit, each reply sent to a customer uses one credit, and each conversation transcript that Synkra emails when a conversation is resolved uses one credit. Each plan includes a monthly allowance for this pool, and you can buy top-ups from Settings and then Billing. You can compare allowances on the pricing page.

Students and community organisations pay less for the same plans through Student pricing and Community Access.

Questions about the email channel

Do I need to change my email address? No. Customers continue to use the address they already know, and the forwarding rule is invisible to them.

Can I connect more than one address? Each email address needs its own inbox in Synkra. If your business uses both support@ and info@, create two inboxes. The same approach works for separate teams, such as Sales and Support, because each inbox gets its own forwarding address.

What about emails from before I set it up? Synkra only sees emails forwarded from the point the rule was created. There is no bulk import, but you can forward specific older emails into the inbox if you want them in Synkra.

What happens if I stop forwarding? Remove the forwarding rule in your mailbox and your email channel goes quiet. Existing conversations stay in Synkra, and your mailbox carries on as normal.

What if a customer replies to a transcript email? The reply comes back into Synkra as a new message on the same conversation, and the conversation reopens if it had been resolved.

What happens during a Synkra outage? Emails sent to your business address still arrive in your mailbox. When Synkra is back online, forwarded copies start arriving in the inbox again, and anything missed in the meantime can be found in your mailbox.

Does it support attachments? Yes. Incoming attachments are stored with the conversation, and outgoing replies support standard attachment types.

Is my email content private? Only emails you forward reach Synkra, and each account's data is kept separate from other accounts. The Privacy Policy has the details.

Where to start

If you already use Synkra Chat, open Settings, then Inboxes, and add your email inbox. If you are new to it, Synkra Chat has a free plan. You can also read Who We Are, What We Build, and Why We Build It Ourselves to learn more about the company that builds it.

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