The moment you install Arbyn, your store gets its own email address, something like [email protected]. This is the address that makes email support work at all. Understanding what it does, and why Arbyn is built to never read your real inbox, makes the rest of email setup much easier.
What it does
Every shop on Arbyn gets a unique inbound address, generated automatically at install and never shared with any other store. Any email that reaches this address is read and answered by your assistant, drafting a reply for your review, or sending it outright once you trust it on autopilot. It works the instant you install Arbyn, with nothing to configure.
You'll never type or choose this address yourself. Arbyn generates it and shows it to you in two places: the Connect inbox step of the setup wizard, and Settings → Email.
Where to find it
Settings → Email, first section, "Your Arbyn inbox," with a Copy button next to it.
How it works
Your Arbyn inbox address is the one thing every piece of email support depends on. Mail reaches it two ways:
Customers email it directly. You can hand this address out as your support address if you want, though most stores don't; it isn't a friendly, memorable address, and most merchants already have a
support@orhello@address customers know.You forward your existing support address to it. This is how most stores use Arbyn: you keep the support email your customers already know, and set up a forwarding rule (in Gmail, Outlook, or elsewhere) so a copy of every message that lands there also lands in your Arbyn inbox. Covered step by step in the next article.
Either way, once a message reaches your Arbyn inbox, the pipeline is the same from there: Arbyn reads it, checks it against real Shopify data if it's about an order, drafts a reply in your voice, and either queues that draft for your review or sends it, depending on how you've configured your agent.
Why forwarding, and not reading your inbox directly
Arbyn does not connect to your Gmail, Outlook, or any other mailbox. There is no login, no permission grant to your real inbox, nothing that lets Arbyn browse messages you haven't chosen to share. The only mail Arbyn ever sees is what specifically arrives at your Arbyn inbox address, because you forwarded it there, or because a customer emailed it directly.
This is a deliberate choice, not a workaround for a technical limitation. A support inbox often holds far more than customer questions: internal threads, vendor invoices, personal mail if it's a shared address, anything else that happens to land there over the years. Reading a whole mailbox would mean Arbyn, and by extension us, seeing all of that, whether it has anything to do with a customer's question or not. Forwarding means you decide exactly what Arbyn sees: everything that reaches your support address, and nothing else in that account.
Good to know
This address is permanent for your store. It's generated once, at install, and doesn't change on its own. Reinstalling Arbyn generates a fresh one.
You can hand this address out directly instead of forwarding at all, if you'd rather use it as a brand-new support line. Most stores forward an existing address to it instead, so nothing changes for their customers.
Nothing about this address is customer-facing by default. Your outbound replies show your store's name as the sender, not this address; customers only ever see it if you choose to hand it out yourself.
FAQ
Do I have to use this exact address? Can Arbyn use my own support@ address instead? Arbyn doesn't send from this address to customers, and it can't receive mail on your own domain directly; forwarding is what bridges the two. Your customers keep emailing the address they already know, you just add one forwarding rule pointing it at your Arbyn inbox.
What happens if I never set up forwarding? Nothing reaches your Arbyn inbox, so email support does nothing. Your chat widget, and any other connected channel, still works independently. You can add forwarding at any time from Settings → Email; there's no deadline.
Does my Arbyn inbox address change if I edit my support email in Settings? No. Your Arbyn inbox address never changes. It's a separate field from your support address; changing your support address only affects which address forwarding, and verification, point at.