Send Email from AI Agents Using UGMail SMTP and IMAP

AI agents increasingly need to interact with the outside world through email — sending task completion notifications, triggering follow-up workflows, or parsing replies to drive the next action. UGMail makes it straightforward to give each agent its own dedicated mailbox with a real email address, so your agents can send and receive email just like a human user would. Because UGMail charges no per-mailbox fees, you can provision a unique address for every agent in your fleet without worrying about cost.

Prerequisites

Your domain is set up and DNS-verified in UGMail
A valid Bearer token from Settings → API Connection at my.ugmail.co
Python 3.7+ (for the examples below)

Create a dedicated mailbox for the agent

Provision a mailbox for your agent using the Management API. Give it a descriptive address that identifies the agent’s role or identity.

curl -X POST "https://mail.ugmail.co/api/principal" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "ai-agent@example.com",
    "type": "individual",
    "secrets": ["AgentPassword123!"],
    "emails": ["ai-agent@example.com"]
  }'

Store the agent’s password securely in your application’s secrets manager or environment variables — your agent code will need it at runtime.

Connect the agent via SMTP to send email

Use Python’s built-in smtplib library to send email from your agent. The example below wraps the SMTP logic in a reusable function you can call from anywhere in your agent’s code.

import smtplib
from email.mime.text import MIMEText
from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart

def send_agent_email(to_addr: str, subject: str, body: str):
    msg = MIMEMultipart()
    msg['From'] = 'ai-agent@example.com'
    msg['To'] = to_addr
    msg['Subject'] = subject
    msg.attach(MIMEText(body, 'plain'))

    with smtplib.SMTP('mail.ugmail.co', 587) as smtp:
        smtp.starttls()
        smtp.login('ai-agent@example.com', 'AgentPassword123!')
        smtp.send_message(msg)

send_agent_email('user@example.com', 'Task Complete', 'Your report is ready.')

UGMail’s SMTP server listens on port 587 with STARTTLS. Always call smtp.starttls() before authenticating to ensure credentials are never sent in plaintext.

Read replies via IMAP

If your agent needs to act on email replies — for example, to continue a conversation, parse an approval, or trigger a downstream workflow — connect to UGMail’s IMAP server and poll the inbox for unseen messages.

import imaplib
import email

def check_agent_inbox():
    with imaplib.IMAP4_SSL('mail.ugmail.co', 993) as imap:
        imap.login('ai-agent@example.com', 'AgentPassword123!')
        imap.select('INBOX')
        _, messages = imap.search(None, 'UNSEEN')
        for num in messages[0].split():
            _, data = imap.fetch(num, '(RFC822)')
            msg = email.message_from_bytes(data[0][1])
            print(f'From: {msg["From"]}, Subject: {msg["Subject"]}')

IMAP runs on port 993 with SSL/TLS — imaplib.IMAP4_SSL handles the secure connection automatically. Call check_agent_inbox() on a schedule (e.g., every 30 seconds) or integrate it into your agent’s event loop to process replies as they arrive.

Consider generating a unique, high-entropy password for each agent mailbox rather than reusing passwords across agents. Store each password in your secrets manager (e.g., AWS Secrets Manager, HashiCorp Vault, or a .env file that is never committed to source control). This way, if one agent is compromised, you can rotate just its credentials without affecting others.

Send responsibly. Even with unlimited mailboxes, email providers judge your domain’s reputation based on sending patterns. Avoid sending bulk email from agent addresses — use dedicated transactional email infrastructure for high-volume sends, and reserve your agent mailboxes for low-volume, genuinely transactional messages. Respect bounce signals and unsubscribe requests to protect your domain’s deliverability.

Connection settings reference

Protocol	Host	Port	Security
SMTP (sending)	`mail.ugmail.co`	`587`	STARTTLS
IMAP (receiving)	`mail.ugmail.co`	`993`	SSL/TLS

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Send Email from AI Agents Using UGMail SMTP and IMAP

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Connection settings reference

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SaaS Onboarding

Manage Aliases

Prerequisites

Connection settings reference

Next steps