Feature guide

#How to read the feature map

Alt8Mail is one codebase with three distinct surfaces: the webmail workspace, the customer admin console and the root-level System Control plane. This page covers the product surface as it exists in version 3.6.0. Capabilities marked paid require a matching license feature; capabilities marked optional require tenant configuration or an external service.

The documentation does not imply a particular commercial edition or rate. Confirm the actual entitlement set with the operator before relying on a paid capability.

#Mail

#Reading and organizing

• Threaded conversations with per-message collapse, participants, message counts and an expand-all view.
• Paged message lists, folder counts, jump-to-date, pinned-first grouping and older-page loading.
• Filters for unread, starred, attachments and files; sorting and a custom filter menu.
• Row and context actions for reply, reply all, forward, delete, archive, move, copy, mark unread, pin, categorise, flag, snooze, rules, junk, phishing, block, source and download.
• Bulk selection with shift-click and keyboard support; bulk actions with an undo token.
• Custom folders, colors, reordering and label/category management.
• Snooze from minutes to a year; snoozed mail returns to the inbox as unread.
• Subscription collection with one-click unsubscribe and audited actions.
• Attachment previews for PDFs and images, raw RFC 822 source, remote-image privacy proxying and sender icons.
• Server-backed drafts that survive reloads and restarts.

#Composing and sending

• Server-backed compose sessions with autosave, multiple compose windows and a compose dock.
• Rich and plain text, To/Cc/Bcc, signatures, multiple send-as identities, priority and classification.
• Attachment picking from Cabinet, recent uploads or the device. The current limits are 25 MB per file and 30 MB total.
• Oversized attachments can become expiring Cabinet share links instead of bouncing.
• Send later with working-hour warnings and previews; scheduled sends survive sign-out and restart.
• Undo send held server-side for a policy-defined window, default 8 seconds.
• DLP checks before send and again at delivery. Confidential and Restricted messages can carry warning, watermark or prevent-forward policy.
• Spell-check review and AI-assisted reply or writing where the tenant has AI configured.
• Outbound domain verification gate and a default per-mailbox recipient cap of 200 recipients per rolling 24 hours.
• Optional dual-delivery archive copies and policy controls for IMAP, POP3 and SMTP.

#Rules, forwarding and trust

• Sieve rules with server validation, preview, reorder and enable/disable.
• Automatic replies with internal and external variants, date ranges and reply intervals.
• Forwarding with keep/stop semantics, optional dates and separate internal/external policy.
• Sender-trust panel showing SPF, DKIM and DMARC results, signing domain, TLS and first-contact state.
• Report phishing, spam or malware; reports become durable records and can feed System Control security review.
• Block, ignore, mute, VIP and Junk-release policy.

#Mail intelligence

• Pulse gives a private year-in-mail view with volume, read time, contacts and period inspection.
• Catch me up summarizes recent change after a session gap.
• Reading-time estimates, reactions and private follow-up reminders (paid for follow-ups).
• Recipient-time scheduling suggestions (paid).
• Template gallery, mail merge and payment-link validation are separately gated.

#Connected accounts and unified inbox

Users can add external IMAP/SMTP accounts alongside their native Alt8Mail mailbox. Presets cover Gmail, Microsoft 365, Yahoo, iCloud, AOL, Zoho, GMX, Yandex, Fastmail and other IMAP servers.

• Google and Microsoft OAuth or app passwords, with connection testing.
• Background sync of standard and custom folders and a unified inbox.
• Actions routed to the correct provider; Gmail avoids duplicate Sent copies.
• External drafts and reauthentication states.
• Private/loopback destination protection, mandatory TLS and port 25 blocking for connected-account egress.
• Cache retention of the newest 3,000 non-starred messages and up to 365 days.
• Tenant policy can disable connected accounts entirely.

#Office

Office is an embedded OnlyOffice integration, not a home-grown word processor. It requires a healthy Office agent and container; OnlyOffice licensing is separate.

• Create and edit documents, spreadsheets and presentations from Cabinet, a compose window or the Office rail.
• Supported new formats are DOCX, XLSX and PPTX; legacy formats are generally view-only.
• Alt8Mail Drive files are editable. Connected Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive and S3 files are read-only in Office.
• Immutable file versions, restore, line/row comparison and a review decision.
• DLP on save, file retention, legal hold, eDiscovery and audit integration.
• Guest access through existing Cabinet share links, with recipient confirmation; no guest account is created.
• In-editor AI is paid (office_ai); DLP checks apply to AI-generated drafts.
• Tenant and group/domain allowlists can restrict Office access.

#Calendar

• Day, work week, week, month, split and agenda views; drag-and-drop and print.
• Multiple calendars, shared colleague calendars, public booking pages (paid) and holiday calendars.
• Recurrence with exceptions, reminders, guests, rooms/resources and Cabinet attachments.
• Signed RSVP links, organizer guest status, iMIP replies and resend-to-non-responders.
• Published iCalendar feeds, HTTPS subscriptions, .ics import/export and CalDAV/CardDAV discovery.
• Meeting polls with signed public links.
• Free/busy lookup and resource conflict handling.
• CalDAV/CardDAV currently exposes the default calendar and default address book only; advanced DAV collections, VTODO and iTIP scheduling over DAV are not supported.

#People, tasks and notes

People combines the tenant directory, personal contacts and multiple address books. It supports source badges, search, profile visibility policy and birthday calendars. There is no contact CSV import/export or contact-group UI in the current workspace.

Tasks supports all/open/mine/team/due-today/overdue/completed views, assignment, priority, tags, linked messages, parent/dependency relationships, Kanban status, recurrence and reminders. Offline task queues are replayed idempotently. The task reminder worker runs every 30 seconds.

Notes is a per-mailbox desk with up to 100 notes, one pinned note, archive search, Markdown-lite formatting, four colors and typed links to conversations, events and files. Shared-mailbox team desks follow mailbox access; read-only delegates cannot edit. The feature can be disabled by tenant policy.

#Cabinet and files

Cabinet is a unified file workspace over Alt8Mail Drive and optional Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive or S3/MinIO.

• Folder tree, tiles/list views, sorting, grouping, filtering and a persistent upload manager.
• Upload from the device, an HTTP(S) URL or a mobile QR code; QR sessions last 60 minutes.
• Chunked Alt8Mail Drive uploads up to 300 MB; URL import is capped at 25 MB.
• ClamAV scanning for uploads, version history, lock and unlock, previews, comments and approvals.
• Expiring external share links with recipient-email confirmation, domain policy, approval and DLP-on-share.
• Internal user/group permissions with immediate revocation.
• File/folder retention, legal hold, audit and Office metadata in eDiscovery (paid where noted).
• Shared storage quota resolved from user, domain and organization policy.

#Search

• PostgreSQL full-text search over subject, participants and body.
• Operators include from:, to:, cc:, subject:, body:, filename:, has:attachment, before:, after:, is:unread, is:starred, in:, larger: and smaller:.
• Multiple filters are ANDed; the server caps result sets and the client pages the message list.
• Notes and Cabinet have separate search paths. Cabinet text/OCR search is part of file governance.
• Natural-language search with citations is paid (ai_search).
• Saved searches are not a current feature.

#AI

AI is optional and requires a tenant administrator to enable a provider. The AI panel clearly states when selected text is being sent to that provider.

• Provider choices are OpenAI-compatible endpoints or Anthropic; model, endpoint, token limits, temperature, timeout and system prompt are configured by an administrator.
• Core capabilities include summaries, translation, reply drafting, writing assistance, thread commitments, tone suggestions, catch-up summaries and sender-trust explanations.
• Attachment context can cover PDFs, Office files, CSVs and images up to 100 MB across the selected attachments. Images require a vision-capable model.
• Tenant budgets are enforced before calls; over-budget requests fail rather than silently spending.
• Advanced triage, obligations, natural-language search, meeting prep, Office AI, policy assist and MCP governance are paid feature keys.
• The assistant drafts work; sending remains a human decision. DLP and prompt-injection boundaries still apply.

#Collaboration and delegation

• Thread handling status, assignments, internal notes, @mentions and closed-conversation views.
• Mailbox delegation with read or read+send access, scoped sessions and immediate grant revocation.
• Shared inboxes with queue assignment, presence, watchers and SLA targets (paid).
• Shared drafts with single-writer leases, versions, comments and conflict protection (paid).
• Team templates with variables and compose integration (paid).
• Team-inbox automation with conditions, actions, dry-run and a bounded worker (paid).
• VIP senders, muted threads and private reactions.
• Delegated sessions do not see connected personal accounts or personal Office editing surfaces.

#Administration and operations

The customer admin console is for tenant administration; System Control is for the host and mail stack.

• Customer admin: users, groups, org units, domains, roles, policies, SCIM, add-ons, storage quotas, AI configuration, quarantine, audit, compliance, integrations and system-tenant administration for system admins.
• Role enforcement is server-side. Built-in administrator roles include User administrator, Security administrator, Helpdesk and Auditor; custom roles can be scoped.
• System Control: dashboard, diagnostics, domains/DNS, mailboxes, aliases, OAuth apps, imports, deliverability, queue, TLS, security reports, services, storage, updates, backups, mail logs, firewall, database and config sync.
• The control-plane terminal is root-equivalent and audited. It is not a sandbox.

#Mobile, languages and accessibility

• Installable PWA with standalone display and app-shell caching. API responses are not cached.
• Web Push with VAPID keys, deep links and offline banners.
• Mobile bottom navigation and safe-area-aware layout.
• Offline queues for a bounded set of mail, task and send actions.
• UI locale support is present for nine locale values, including Arabic RTL. Translation coverage is partial; do not describe the entire interface as fully localized.
• Automated accessibility checks and keyboard gates exist. This is not a WCAG certification or a substitute for a screen-reader acceptance test.

#Add-ons, APIs and MCP

• Twenty curated first-party connectors, including Slack, HubSpot, Salesforce, Jira, Linear, Zendesk, Freshdesk, Pipedrive, Zoho CRM, Asana, Calendly and DeepL.
• No third-party JavaScript executes in the webmail origin and there is no open community marketplace.
• Tenant API v1 covers mail read/send, tasks and calendar with scoped keys, idempotency and signed webhooks. It does not expose files, contacts, DLP or admin operations.
• A read/draft-only MCP server is available; governed write tools require mcp_governance.
• SIEM audit export, CRM cache, file governance and support telemetry are separately licensed capabilities.

#Edition gates and boundaries

The signed license carries features; the product checks individual gates at the API and worker layer. Do not infer a feature from a button being visible. Some surfaces render and then return 403 LICENSE_FEATURE when the entitlement is absent.

Important boundaries:

• No S/MIME, OpenPGP or end-to-end encrypted mail.
• No native iOS, Android or desktop app; the PWA is the shipped mobile path.
• No customer-admin passkeys or IdP federation. Webmail supports passkeys and OIDC/SAML; the customer admin uses TOTP/recovery.
• No IdP-initiated login, SSO just-in-time provisioning or SAML single logout.
• No PST, EWS or Exchange Web Services mailbox import. Zoho Mail imports through generic IMAP.
• No application-level encryption of mail rows/search vectors; use encrypted volumes or database encryption at the infrastructure layer.
• No WAL/PITR continuous database recovery, off-site backup replication or automatic restore schedule.
• No built-in audio/video conferencing: a Jitsi link is inserted as text.
• No built-in ticketing system; helpdesk roles and external ticketing add-ons are separate.
• No certification is implied. See Secure for the detailed trust boundaries.