When a visitor fills in your contact form, you do not really receive a mail from them. Your own site builds an outgoing mail containing their message — often sent from your site address to your site address — and the visitor’s real address is hidden in the Reply-To header or in the order. Hit “reply” in a normal mail program and you write to yourself.
tlloancy Outgoing Mail Inbox captures those outgoing mails (the same wp_mail() source WP Mail Logging uses), files the ones meant for you like received mail, and makes Reply go to the actual visitor or customer:
- For you — To matches an owner address (admin email, your reply From, or extra addresses you list). These rows are highlighted.
- Automated WordPress — the site mailed itself (install welcome, successful auto-updates, mailer digests).
- Sent — everything else the site mailed (customer confirmations, password resets…).
- Reply — sends a new message to the visitor or customer, From the site mailbox. It does not resend the original mail to the same To (that would write to yourself).
While the inbox is open, a newly logged wp_mail() updates the list through the WordPress admin Heartbeat. Other plugins’ admin notices are hidden on this screen.
Background noise is filed automatically, in every language. The plugin recognizes system mail by who sends it (the WordPress auto-updater, wp_new_blog_notification, language packs, the WP Mail SMTP weekly summary), never by the subject text:
- Successful auto-update notices, the install welcome mail, and mailer digests are marked System and filed under Automated WordPress.
- A failed update or a recovery-mode crash becomes a highlighted Site alert in Automated WordPress, with the PHP error details pulled out of the mail (WordPress 7.2 adds the last fatal error to update-failure mails; recovery mails have carried it since 5.2).
AI, the WordPress way. With the WordPress AI plugin and a connector key, a Draft a reply with AI button appears on the message screen. It writes a reply in the language of the original mail; nothing is sent until you click Send reply. Prompts only go to the connector checked for this plugin under Settings Connectors Approvals — never to an unapproved one. Developers can plug AI (or plain PHP rules) into the sorting itself through the inbox_bridge_classify filter and the inbox_bridge_ai_prompt() helper.
The reply address is taken from the Reply-To header when it is not the site, then from a WooCommerce order number in the subject/body, then from the first non-owner email in the message. You can edit it before sending.
Replies go through wp_mail(). If WP Mail SMTP (or another mailer) is already talking to Brevo, the reply is authenticated on your domain like any other site mail.
This is not a mailbox for people who write directly to you@yourdomain.com from Gmail. Those never pass through wp_mail().
Not affiliated with inboxbridge.io, Proton Mail Bridge, or other products named Inbox Bridge.
Step-by-step guides: docs/USER-GUIDE.md (English) and docs/MODE-DEMPLOI.md (French).