Email from the Conversation
At a glance
| Location | Conversation channel picker, and Settings for the connection |
| Plan | All plans, including the free tier |
| Related features | 3 |
Send email to a contact from inside their conversation, using your own Gmail address, and see the replies in the same timeline as the WhatsApp messages. Connect Gmail once in Settings; this is a separate connection from Google Meet, and connecting one does not connect the other. Only the person who connected a mailbox can send from it, because a shared team inbox is not a shared mail identity. The address is always the one on the contact record, and there is no CC and no BCC, which is what keeps this a conversation tool rather than a bulk-mail tool. If the contact has no address, or the wrong one, you can add or change it from the channel picker or from a line above the composer, and Spun then re-checks whether the email can be sent; what you are editing is the contact, never the recipient of one message. Addresses that came from an enrichment lookup rather than from a real relationship can never be emailed at all. An address you type or pick yourself needs no further confirmation, whether you entered it in the composer or on the contact card: entering it is itself the record, kept with who entered it and when. For an address that arrived some other way and has never been confirmed, Spun still asks in one screen how you know them and why you are writing, and records that against the address. Where a contact has more than one address on file, the line above the composer shows which one is in use and where each came from, so a silent change of address is visible. The composer offers a meeting link, a task assignment, a reminder, or free text, and each one writes its own specific subject from what it is about, except free text where you write the subject yourself. The same AI writing panel the WhatsApp composer has is available here too: switch it on and it can draft the email for you, using the earlier messages in that thread as context when you are replying, with the tone, length, perspective and language controls you already know. What it writes goes into the message body when you choose to put it there, never into the subject and never straight out as an email: you read it, change it, and press send yourself. The composer can also be expanded to fill the conversation area when you are writing something long, and collapsed again when you would rather see the recent messages while you type. An email you started but did not send is kept for that contact and that thread, and comes back in the composer next time you open it, with a note saying so and a way to discard it; it is kept only in the browser you were using, and it is cleared when you send or when you sign out. Attachments are allowed, up to the Gmail limit of about 25MB in total, which is lower than the WhatsApp limit. Spun tells you when Gmail accepted a message and when the person replied, and it never claims a message was delivered: bounces go back to Gmail and never reach Spun, so a delivery claim would be a guess. There is no read tracking, no tracking pixel and no rewritten links on this path. Marketing email cannot be sent this way. Each mailbox has a daily and an hourly sending limit, shown in the composer before you send. A send can also be refused for repeating a message you have already sent to that person, or for writing to the same person again and again, and the refusal says which of those limits stopped it. The panel above the send button also shows the route the replies will really take, and says plainly when they will land in your own mailbox rather than coming back into this conversation. When someone replies, the reply comes back to Spun on a receive-only address and appears in the same conversation, with any files they attached kept alongside it. Spun checks that the reply really came from the address it claims, and a reply from an address that is not part of the thread is held aside rather than shown in the conversation. An incoming reply never triggers an automated action on its own. Held mail has its own short list in the conversation, which shows only who wrote, the subject and why it was held - never the message itself, because the sender is exactly the one you have not vouched for yet. Accepting is a single tap with a few seconds to undo it, and it lets that sender into that conversation from then on; it changes nothing about the saved address on the contact record. A message you accept then behaves like any other incoming message: the conversation moves up your chat list with the reply as its preview, the unread count goes up, and the notification you would have had if it had never been held is delivered on accept, following your normal setting for email reply notifications. That happens on accept and never while a message is still held, so a message you have not vouched for cannot move anything in your list. Rejecting is final for that message. If your organization has replies going to your own mailbox as well as to Spun, a held message says so, because Spun holding it did not stop it reaching you. Once a sender is part of the thread you see each message in the conversation on its own, in the right direction, rather than one line per thread: the text is shown in an isolated frame that cannot load anything from the internet, remote images stay blocked until you choose to load them, quoted history from earlier replies is folded away behind a toggle, and attachments are listed with their size, with file types Spun considers unsafe never offered for download. Automatic replies such as out-of-office are marked as such. You can ask Spun to summarize an email thread, and to draft a reply for you. A draft always opens in the composer for you to read, change and decide on - Spun never sends it, and a drafted reply goes through exactly the same checks and sending limits as one you typed yourself. Neither the summary nor the draft is allowed to do anything else: reading an email cannot create a task, send a message, change a contact or put something in your calendar, no matter what the email asks for, because the part of Spun that reads email has no ability to take those actions at all. Held-aside mail and automatic replies are never read by these features, so a message you have not vouched for cannot influence a summary or a draft. The Email section of the contact panel lists the threads you have with that contact, each with how many messages it holds and when the last reply came, a way to jump straight into the conversation, and a New email button. An email you began and did not send is shown there too, with Continue writing and Discard.
How to use
- Go to Settings, open Google Calendar and Meet, and use the "Connect Gmail for sending" card to connect your Gmail account.
- Open a one-to-one WhatsApp conversation with a contact who has an email address on their record.
- Open the channel picker beside the conversation name and choose Email. If Email is greyed out, the picker says why and, where something can be done about it, offers the action right there: adding an email address for a contact who has none, or connecting Gmail.
- The first time you email someone, confirm how you know them.
- Pick a template chip or write free text, check the subject, and write the message.
- The preview above the send button shows which of your connected accounts it is sent from, the exact address it will go to, the address replies come back to, and how many sends you have left today and this hour.
- Send. The row appears in the conversation with "Sent via Gmail", and changes to "Replied" when they answer.
Related features
FAQ
- Can I send email from Spun?
- How do I connect my Gmail?
- Why is Email greyed out for this contact?
- Why can I not add a CC?
- Does Spun tell me if my email was delivered?
- Can I see if someone opened my email?
- How big can an email attachment be?
- Why do I have to confirm the relationship before emailing?
- Can someone else on my team send from my Gmail?
- How many emails can I send in a day?
- What happens when someone replies to my email?
- Do I get the files someone attaches to a reply?
- Why was my email refused as a duplicate?
- Where do I see all my email threads with a contact?
- What happened to the email I started and did not finish?
- Will replies come back into the conversation or go to my own mailbox?