Guide

How to manage mailboxes with MCP

If you are the one who runs the family's email, you can do the everyday parts from a chat: a mailbox for a new family member, a shared address, a name that needs fixing.

Updated October 2026

Short answer

MCP is the shared way AI assistants like ChatGPT connect to other apps. With InboxFamily, the family admin can connect once and then ask the assistant to create a mailbox, add a shared address or change a name. Anything that removes something asks first, and deleting a mailbox always takes two separate steps.

Who this is for

The family admin: the person who signs in to the family's InboxFamily panel. Everyone else in the family can connect their own mail to ChatGPT, but managing mailboxes is for admins only. A family can have more than one.

Connect it once

In ChatGPT, or another assistant that supports connections, open Settings and find the section for apps and connections.
Add InboxFamily.
Sign in on the InboxFamily page that opens. Choose "I manage the family's domain" to use your passkey or an email link, the same as for your family's panel. The assistant never sees how you signed in.
Approve the access, and you are back in the chat.

If you look after more than one family's domain, say which one in your request. The assistant has to name it, and InboxFamily will not guess for it.

What to ask

"Add a mailbox for Emma."

Creates emma@ on your domain

"Make hello@ a shared address that goes to both parents."

Adds a shared address

"Change the name on Tom's mailbox to Tom Smith."

Changes the name people see

"Which mailboxes do we have?"

Lists the family's mailboxes

"Remove the shared address for the old soccer team."

Asks before it removes

"Delete Grandpa's old mailbox."

Two steps, see below

The plan's limits are the same as in the panel: six mailboxes and ten shared addresses. If you are at six, the assistant will tell you, and you can free one up first. Not sure whether someone needs a mailbox or a shared address? This guide to aliases helps you decide.

What asks for a confirmation

Adding things is quick, because adding can be undone. Removing things is slower on purpose.

Removing a shared address. Most assistants stop and ask you to approve a change like this before they make it.
Deleting a mailbox. This erases the mail in it, so it never happens in one step, whichever assistant you use.

Why deleting a mailbox takes two steps

When you ask to delete a mailbox, nothing is deleted. InboxFamily answers first with what would be lost: the address, whose it is, how much mail is in it, and a clear warning that there is no undo. With that answer comes a confirmation that only works for that one mailbox and runs out after five minutes.

Only a second, separate request with that confirmation deletes the mailbox. The assistant cannot make up a confirmation of its own, and it cannot reuse one for a different address.

The check lives with us rather than in the assistant for a simple reason. Some assistants have an Approve button and some don't. Because the two steps are built into InboxFamily, the warning reaches a person every time, in every one of them.

What stays in the panel

The chat covers mailboxes and shared addresses. Billing, your plan and your domain stay in the panel, where you see the whole picture before you change it.

For the curious

Every request is checked on our side against the family you manage before anything changes. A name in the chat is just text, and text can come from anywhere, including an email the assistant read a minute ago. So the assistant can only ever reach your own family's mailboxes, whatever it is told. If an admin loses admin rights, the assistant loses them at the same moment.

Run the family's email from a chat

Six mailboxes, ten shared addresses, your own domain. $19 a month for the whole family.

Find your family's domain