Outreach objects

Specification Reviewed · not yet fact-checked

At a glance

Definition

An email account is a connected email identity — address, sender name, domain — that Reply sends and receives through. "Mailbox" is the common synonym. Sequences execute email steps through the accounts assigned to them, and one account always serves as the default — the main account used to send emails.

Purpose

Email accounts are the execution layer of email outreach: they hold the connection to the provider, the daily sending limit, the sender name and signature, the opt-out settings, and the safety settings that protect sender reputation.

Relationships

Creation

New accounts are added under Settings → Email Accounts → New email account. Connection methods:

Generic domains are rejected. Addresses on generic domains like gmail.com and yahoo.com cannot be added as sending accounts — Reply accepts only business or corporate domains, for deliverability, reputation, compliance, and sending-limit reasons. A generic domain is still fine as your Reply login.

A successful connection shows a green dot next to the email address.

Zapmail exports are queued from the Zapmail side and land in the Reply workspace the API key belongs to — the key is unique per user and workspace. On an Email Volume plan, an export that would push you past the mailbox limit shows a confirmation first; Proceed opens the billing summary so the plan can be upgraded before the export finishes, and an export that stays inside the limit runs through without interruption. Connecting mailboxes to Reply does not connect them to MailToaster — for warm-up, export the same mailboxes from Zapmail again, choose MailToaster under All connected platforms, and sign in with the MailToaster account details, having first linked that MailToaster account to Reply.

Lifecycle and states

An account is either connected or disconnected. A disconnected account cannot send, which is the most common cause of a stalled sequence — see Why was a mailbox disconnected?. To reconnect a single-click account, hover over it and click the Reconnect icon; a manually connected account has no Reconnect icon and must be removed and added back. After reconnecting, restart affected sequences by turning the toggle off and back on — they resume within 15–20 minutes according to the schedule, and historical reports and statistics are unaffected.

One account is always the default sender; hover and click Make default to change it.

Configuration

Warm-up is powered by MailToaster and managed from the account's Warm-up tab. Profiles: New email account (brand-new inboxes), Reputation protect (existing inboxes), and Custom profile (your own limits and behavior). The Daily goal and Daily increment control volume, in Ramp-up mode (gradual increase to the goal) or Random mode (a random number within a min–max range each day). Sent folder cleanup removes warm-up emails older than 3 days. Activation fails with an error when no warm-up seats are available on your MailToaster subscription. See Email warm-up.

Signature is set per mailbox: open Settings → Email Accounts, click the mailbox, open the Signature section, compose in the text editor, and save. It can carry your name, job title, company website, and social links, and it then appears in every email sent from that mailbox. When a signature copied from elsewhere does not paste in cleanly, build it as HTML and paste the source code instead — Reply's own email signature generator returns HTML for exactly this.

Unsubscribe options come in three forms: an opt-out link or text at the end of each sequence email (set per mailbox on the Opt-out tab), a custom opt-out link inserted into a step with {opt-out} as the URL, and the List-Unsubscribe header (enabled per sequence). All fields left blank removes the opt-out text entirely. With the link variant, the words that become the hyperlink must sit inside curly brackets — for example Would you like to unsubscribe? Just {click this link} to opt-out. Text saved without brackets is sent as plain words with no link behind them, which is the usual explanation for a missing opt-out hyperlink; Regenerate offers another wording if you would rather start from a fresh variant.

Domain health is checked by the Email Health Checker on the Domain Setup tab. Once a domain passes cleanly, Reply stops re-checking it automatically — re-run the check yourself after changing DNS records. Several domains can be rechecked in one go: tick the mailboxes on the Email Accounts page and click Retest domain health in the bulk-actions toolbar (on a phone, the same entry sits in the actions menu). Reply confirms that the check has started and clears the selection. The check runs once per domain even when several selected mailboxes share one, skips domains already Under testing..., and can take up to 10 minutes; each card shows Under testing... with its Last updates value set to the moment the check was queued, then refreshes on its own when results arrive. A failed request keeps your selection so you can retry. See SPF, DKIM, DMARC.

A health check that never completes usually means the test message never arrived — the provider blocked it on the way out rather than Reply failing to run the test. Check the sending mailbox for a bounce addressed to Reply's health-check address, which names the cause; Microsoft tenants that are new or on a trial commonly return a 550 5.7.708 Service unavailable. Access denied, traffic not accepted from this IP error and need permission from Microsoft support to send through a third-party tool. If you administer the mail platform, check the message trace or email logs for the test message sitting blocked or in outbound quarantine, release it, and allow the health-check address through your outbound policy. Re-run the test once the block is cleared.

Processing behavior

When several accounts are assigned to one sequence, contacts are distributed across them round-robin, and all follow-ups for a contact are sent from the same account as the first email unless that account is removed — the selection logic is specified in How Reply selects a sending mailbox. The account's own daily limit always beats a higher sequence limit. The Reassign email accounts setting (Settings → Emails → Sequence email accounts) auto-assigns contacts that lack a sending account and redistributes contacts when an account is removed from a sequence.

For split-server setups, sending through SendGrid can report bounces to Reply via a SendGrid Event Webhook (Settings → Emails → SendGrid bounce webhooks): Bounce and Spam report events are recorded as bounces, recipient-caused Dropped events likewise, and Deferred events are treated as temporary. Detection covers only emails sent after the webhook was connected. For Mailgun and other SMTP servers, bounces are not detected automatically — export them from the ESP as CSV and mark the prospects in Reply. See Bounce handling.

Side effects

Connecting an account lets Reply send and receive through it — incoming replies are matched to contacts by reply detection. When the opt-out text variant is on and a contact replies with that text, Reply sorts the reply into the Do Not Contact inbox category and assigns the Opted Out status; no further emails are sent unless the status is removed manually. The opt-out text or link is not added to test emails or direct messages sent from a prospect's profile.

Limits

Deletion behavior

Remove an account by hovering over it in Settings → Email Accounts and clicking the Remove icon. Deleting the default account makes the first mailbox in the list the new default. Deleting an active sending account automatically unassigns its contacts, and the affected sequence's toggle shows a notification to add a new account — after adding one, prospects must be assigned to it manually unless Reassign email accounts is enabled. Sequences without email steps continue as usual.

FAQ

What happens when an email account disconnects?

Its sequences cannot send through it. Reconnect single-click accounts with the Reconnect icon; manually connected accounts must be removed and added back. Restart affected sequences with the toggle — they resume within 15–20 minutes on schedule, with historical data intact. See Why was a mailbox disconnected?.

Can I connect a gmail.com or yahoo.com address?

Not as a sending account — generic domains are rejected at connection, and only business or corporate domains are accepted. A generic domain still works as your Reply login. See Sender reputation.

How many email accounts does my plan include?

Trial: 2. Multichannel plan: 5 on monthly, 10 on annual. Email Volume plans: a fair-usage number tied to your active-contact tier. Agency plans: unlimited. Any plan can add more at $29/month each — see Limits.

How do I connect many mailboxes at once?

Use New Email Account → Import from CSV with the sample file (Email, Daily Limit, Sender Name, and the SMTP/IMAP columns). The same CSV also works for uploading mailboxes to MailToaster warm-up, and several mailbox providers export in this format. Zapmail mailboxes have a native path that runs from the Zapmail side: select them there, click Export, choose Reply, and paste your Reply API key. Warm-up is a separate step — export the same mailboxes to MailToaster as well, because connecting them to Reply does not connect them to MailToaster.

How do I find one mailbox among hundreds?

Type into the Search field in the Email Accounts toolbar, next to the view selector and the filters. It matches part of either the mailbox email or the mailbox name, ignores case, and updates the list shortly after you stop typing. Search works in both the list view and the domain (grouped) view, and stacks with the tags, domains, and owners filters, so results respect both at once. In the domain view, matching domains expand automatically and domains with no match are hidden while the search is active. Clearing the field restores the full list, and if nothing matches you get the standard empty state.

What happens when an account is deleted?

Sending and receiving through it stop, its contacts are unassigned, and the sequence toggle prompts for a replacement account. The first mailbox in the list becomes the new default if the default was deleted. See Connect a mailbox.

Related

• Connect a mailbox
• Configure sending limits
• Mailbox selection
• Deliverability
• Limits

Build with Reply

• REST API: docs.reply.io — email-accounts endpoints
• MCP: agents.reply.io/mcp — agents manage accounts, limits, and signatures
• CLI: agents.reply.io/cli