Customer emails: AI-drafted replies from your shop's mailbox

What it does

Emporiqa is your AI shop assistant, and it works in two places: the chat on your shop, and your customer email. In your email, it reads each new message in your shop's Inbox and sorts customer emails from newsletters, notifications and sales pitches. When you open a customer email, it can write a draft reply from your products, your pages and, when your plugin looks orders up, the customer's order (on Gmail, Google Workspace and Microsoft mailboxes). Nothing is sent until someone on your team checks the draft and presses Send reply, unless the store owner switches on automatic replies for the topics your team already sends unchanged (see Automatic replies below). The reply goes from your own address, in the same email conversation, and is saved in your Sent folder.

How a reply goes out

Emporiqa checks your Inbox every 5 minutes, and a new customer email shows up in Customer emails, under To answer.
Open it and press Write the reply. When your shop still has to do something, for example on a return, the draft comes with a short to-do list.
Check the draft, change what you like, and press Send reply.

The four tabs

To answer: Customer emails waiting for a reply.
Needs you: Emails a person should answer: an upset customer, a refund demand, someone asking for a person, payment, legal or privacy requests, and anything unclear or suspicious. No draft is written for these; write the reply yourself, or press Write a draft anyway if you want one.
Sent: Replies sent from Emporiqa, with what they cost this period. Automatic ones are marked Sent automatically.
Other mail: Newsletters, automatic replies, notifications, bounced emails and sales pitches. Free. If one is a customer email, move it to To answer.

Connect your mailbox

The shop owner connects the mailbox in Settings > Customer emails: choose where your shop's email is, then enter the address and its password and press Connect mailbox, or, for Microsoft 365 and Outlook.com, press Sign in with Microsoft. If your last sign-in was more than 15 minutes ago, you sign in again first.

About the password

Microsoft 365 and Outlook.com use Sign in with Microsoft instead: no password is given or stored.
Gmail needs an app password, made for Emporiqa. IONOS, Strato, OVHcloud and other hosting mail use your normal email password.
That password can read and send all mail in the mailbox.
It is stored encrypted, used only to sign in, and never shown again, even to us.
Only the shop owner can connect a mailbox, and you can disconnect it any time.

Gmail or Google Workspace

Open myaccount.google.com/apppasswords, signed in as the shop's Gmail.
Under App name, type Emporiqa and press Create.
Copy the 16-letter password. Spaces don't matter.
Paste it on the connect form. Google emails you a security alert: that is expected, it is the password you just made.

Google says the setting is not available? On personal Gmail, turn on 2-Step Verification first (Google Account, Security, 2-Step Verification), then open the link again. On Google Workspace, your admin may have turned app passwords off. Ask them to allow app passwords for your account; if they can't, write to us and we will help.

IONOS, Strato and OVHcloud

Choose your provider and enter your email address and password. The server settings are filled in for you.

IONOS (Germany): for IONOS accounts in Germany. IONOS in another country signs you in on its own servers: choose Another provider and enter the servers from IONOS's help page for your country.
Strato.
OVHcloud web hosting mail: the email that comes with OVHcloud web hosting. Email Pro and Exchange have servers of their own: choose Another provider.

Another provider

Choose Another provider and enter the servers from your provider's help page, where they are listed as IMAP and SMTP settings: the incoming mail server (IMAP) on port 993, and the outgoing mail server (SMTP) on port 465 or 587. If you sign in with a name that is not the email address, enter it under Sign-in name.

Microsoft 365 and Outlook.com

Choose Microsoft 365 / Outlook.com and press Sign in with Microsoft, signed in as the shop's Microsoft account. Microsoft asks you to let Emporiqa read and send mail for it and read its basic profile. Emporiqa uses that only for the Inbox, the Sent folder's headers, sending your replies and the mailbox address. Accept, and you come back to Emporiqa with the mailbox connected.

Emporiqa asks Microsoft for permission to read mail and send mail, your basic profile, and a sign-in it can renew. It reads new mail in your Inbox, and checks your Sent folder only for whether a reply already went out (who it was to, the thread and the time, never the text). Read permission cannot delete, move or mark anything as read.
No password is stored. Microsoft gives Emporiqa a sign-in it can renew, stored encrypted and never shown, even to us.
Some work or school accounts let only an admin approve new apps. Then you see "Your Microsoft 365 admin needs to approve Emporiqa first" with a link to send them. Once they approve, press Sign in with Microsoft again.
Replies go out through Microsoft, in the same conversation, and are saved in your Sent Items folder.

One address, and your signature

Both are optional, on the connect form and later in Settings > Customer emails. Only answer mail sent to: if several addresses arrive in one inbox, for example shop@ and you@, enter the one to answer; mail to the others is left out. Signature: added under every reply.

Automatic replies

Off until the store owner switches them on in Settings > Customer emails, which asks for a recent sign-in. Then Emporiqa can send a reply itself, but only on a topic that has earned it: in the last 90 days your team sent at least 10 of its drafts on that topic, and at least 90% of them unchanged.

Only four topics can earn it: order status, product questions, return-policy questions and general questions.
Each automatic reply waits 10 minutes under Sending soon. Anyone on your team can stop it there, and the email stays in To answer for a person.
Never for emails our sorting marks as complaints, refunds, payment, legal or privacy, emails that need a to-do for your team, replies that would promise something (a refund, a replacement, a date), or other mail.
A draft that rests on none of your products, pages or order data is left for a person.
Only for senders whose address the receiving mail server verified. If the customer writes back within a day, the next reply is yours to send.
At most 100 automatic replies a day per store.
Only on Gmail, Google Workspace and Microsoft (Outlook.com and Microsoft 365) mailboxes.
A failed automatic send is never tried again: it waits for a person.
Each one costs the same as a reply you send and is marked Sent automatically.
The store owner can switch them off at any time. Replies waiting under Sending soon are then stopped too.

What Emporiqa can see and do

It reads new mail in your Inbox, from the moment you connect. It also checks your Sent folder for whether a reply already went out (who it was to, the thread and the time, never the text). Older mail and Spam are never opened.
Every new email in your Inbox is read and sorted by AI, newsletters and other mail included. Only customer emails get a draft.
Nothing in your Inbox is deleted, moved or marked as read. Replies you send appear in your Sent folder.
It sends when someone on your team presses Send reply or, if the store owner switched on automatic replies, after the 10-minute Sending soon wait. Either way it sends from your address, and the reply is in your Sent folder.
Emails stay in Customer emails for 90 days, then they are deleted.
To sort an email and write its draft, the email text and the draft go to OpenAI in the US, under the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, and the searches made for the draft go to OpenRouter and Cohere for ranking. They are not used to train any AI model. OpenAI keeps requests for up to 30 days to check for abuse.

What it costs

You pay for each reply drafted by Emporiqa's AI that you send. Automatic replies cost the same. Drafts you don't send, replies you write yourself, the sorting, other mail and sends that failed cost nothing. It comes out of your signup credit first, like a chat conversation, and counts toward the same monthly limit. See pricing

Drafting pauses at 90% of your monthly limit, so the chat on your shop keeps running. You can still write replies yourself, free, or raise the limit in Billing.
When the signup credit is used up and there is no card, add one in Billing to keep drafting.
Sent an AI reply to an email that was not a customer email? The shop owner can refund it on that email within 14 days. The first three refunds in a billing period are always allowed; after that, only while that period's refunds, this one included, stay at or under a fifth of its email charges, and otherwise through our support. A charge not billed yet is cancelled; any other comes back as credit, which your next conversations and emails use first.

Who does what

The shop owner connects the mailbox, switches automatic replies on and off, changes the address filter and signature, disconnects it, and refunds a charge.
Everyone on your team opens Customer emails, writes drafts, sends replies and can stop a reply under Sending soon. Unlimited team members, no per-seat fee.
If two people send a reply to the same email, only the first goes out; the second sees that it was already answered. There is no assigning emails or internal notes.

Disconnect

In Settings > Customer emails, open Disconnect this mailbox. New emails stop coming in; emails already in Customer emails stay for 90 days. On Gmail, also delete the Emporiqa app password at myaccount.google.com/apppasswords. On Microsoft, also remove Emporiqa's access at account.live.com/consent for Outlook.com, or myapps.microsoft.com for a work or school account.

Where it stops

It sends a reply by itself only after the store owner switches on automatic replies, and only within the rules above.
It does not read attachments. An email over 2 MB is not picked up at all: answer it from your mailbox.

Troubleshooting

Microsoft says my admin must approve Emporiqa

Your organisation lets only an admin approve new apps. Send your Microsoft 365 admin the link shown on the page. Once they approve Emporiqa, press Sign in with Microsoft again.

Google didn't accept the password

Use an app password, not your normal Gmail password (see the steps above). On Google Workspace, your admin may have turned app passwords off. Ask them to allow app passwords for your account; if they can't, write to us and we will help.

My provider refused the address and password

Check you can sign in to your webmail with them. Some providers switch mail apps off by default: look for IMAP in your email settings. After three refused sign-ins in a row, connecting pauses for 5 minutes, because mail servers lock out repeated wrong passwords.

No emails arrive

Only mail that arrives after you connect is read, and only in your Inbox. Emporiqa checks every 5 minutes; press Check now at the top of Customer emails to check at once. If you set Only answer mail sent to, mail to your other addresses is left out, and mail sent from the shop's own address is never brought in.

A draft has no order details

Order details come only when your plugin looks orders up and a Gmail, Google Workspace or Microsoft mailbox has confirmed the sender. If a filtering service sits in front of the mailbox, the sender may not be confirmed, and the draft then comes without order details.

It says it can't sign in to your mailbox

The password was changed or revoked. The shop owner connects the mailbox again in Settings > Customer emails, with its current password.