grokbot email after a day: the limits nobody mentions + how i put mine on my own domain
been digging into the new bot email since yesterday, few things i didnt know going in
- you get one address per account, all your bots share it
- you cant rename or delete it later so pick the name carefully
- name+test@ aliases dont arrive (no bounce either, they just vanish)
- theres no inbox screen, to see what came in or what it sent you ask the bot
- new mail doesnt wake the bot by itself, you need an event driven routine
for signups and verification codes its totally fine. but i wanted my bot to email actual customers, so i didnt want @mail.grokbot.com and i wanted to be able to open the inbox myself
what i ended up doing: a mailbox on my own domain, connected to grok as a custom connector (mcp), plus a webhook that starts a grok automation when mail lands
one gotcha that cost me a while: grok automation webhooks dont take a bearer token. they give you a whsec_ secret and only accept signed requests (standard webhooks format). anything else gets a 400
full disclosure i build shipmail and thats what i used, but any inbox with mcp + signed webhooks works the same way. wrote the steps up here if useful: https://shipmail.to/blog/grok-bot-email-on-your-own-domain