Connect AOL Mail to Claude,
and Cursor, ChatGPT, any MCP client
Give your AI agent a real AOL Mail inbox in minutes. Read, search, send, reply, schedule and organize mail with a single app password, and use the same inbox in every MCP client, not just one.
Claude cannot reach AOL Mail on its own. mcpemails is a hosted MCP server that connects it over IMAP using an app password, so Claude, Cursor or any MCP client can read, search, send and organize that mail. Setup takes a couple of minutes and one inbox is free.
How AOL Mail connects: IMAP and an app password
AOL Mail connects over IMAP/SMTP using an AOL app password. Your ordinary AOL password will not authenticate a mail client, so a rejected login here is almost always a missing app password. Turn on 2-Step Verification, generate an app password under Account Info, Account Security, then paste it into mcpemails with your full AOL address.
The exact AOL Mail IMAP and SMTP settings
Copy these into the connect form. mcpemails prefills them where it can, and retries the other standard transport if the first does not answer.
| Protocol | Server | Port | Security |
|---|---|---|---|
| IMAP (incoming) | imap.aol.com | 993 | TLS (implicit) |
| SMTP (outgoing) | smtp.aol.com | 465 | TLS (implicit) |
Verified 2026-08-31: imap.aol.com answered a TLS connection and identified itself as an IMAP server under that name. It advertises OAUTHBEARER, PLAIN, XOAUTH2 authentication.
Sign in with: Your full AOL address, including the domain: name@aol.com. Older aim.com and country AOL addresses take the same form.
A AOL Mail inbox your agent can actually use
Nine action-based MCP tools, not just drafts. Your agent finishes the job inside AOL Mail.
- 01Read
Read & search mail
List, read and search across folders to find that invoice, summarize a thread, or pull the latest from a sender.
- 02Send
Send, reply & forward
Compose and send real messages, reply in-thread, and forward, directly from your mailbox, not as a draft you finish by hand.
- 03Schedule
Schedule for later
Queue a message to go out at the right time, so your agent can draft now and send on schedule.
- 04Organize
Move, copy, flag, archive, delete
Keep the inbox tidy: file mail into folders, flag what matters, archive the rest, or delete on request.
Connect AOL Mail in four steps
From sign-up to first AI email in a couple of minutes.
Create a free account
Sign up for mcpemails, no card required. The free plan connects one inbox, forever.
Generate an AOL app password
In AOL Mail, open Account Info, Account Security, turn on 2-Step Verification if it is off, then generate an app password. Copy it straight away, AOL shows it only once.
Paste it into mcpemails
Choose IMAP / SMTP, add your AOL Mail address, the hosts below and the password to connect the inbox securely.
Paste the MCP URL into your AI
Drop https://mcpemails.com/api/mcp into Claude, Cursor or ChatGPT, authorize, and your agent has the inbox.
Comparing providers first? See the email provider compatibility matrix
What actually goes wrong with AOL Mail
AOL Mail runs on Yahoo's platform, but the app password has to come from AOL
imap.aol.com resolves through the same yahoodns.net mail service that serves Yahoo Mail, and the two servers greet you with the same banner. What is not shared is the account. An AOL address is managed from the AOL Account Security page, and an app password generated inside a Yahoo account will not open an AOL mailbox. This matters because search results for AOL settings routinely hand you a Yahoo help article: the steps described are right, the site you are meant to be on is wrong.
The app password is a wizard, it is shown once, and your password change does not revoke it
On the AOL Account Security page, choose Generate app password (some accounts show Generate and manage app passwords), then Get Started, name the app, then Generate password. AOL prints it a single time. Afterwards it keeps working even if you change your main AOL password, so changing your password does not disconnect a mail client. Deleting that specific app password on the same screen is the only way to revoke access.
AOL's IMAP does not offer AUTH=LOGIN, but its SMTP does
When probed, AOL's IMAP server advertised AUTH=PLAIN alongside the two OAuth mechanisms, and no AUTH=LOGIN. Its submission server, on the other hand, accepts both PLAIN and LOGIN. So the incoming and outgoing halves of one account can behave differently inside the same client: tooling hard-wired to the LOGIN mechanism, which is common in code written against Exchange, sends mail happily and then fails to read it, with an authentication error that reads exactly like a wrong password.
System folders resolve by role, so renaming them is safe
AOL advertises SPECIAL-USE, MOVE, UIDPLUS and IDLE. In plain terms: Sent, Drafts, Spam and Trash are identified by what they are rather than by what they are called, so an agent still finds your Sent folder after you rename it, and moving a message is one atomic command instead of a copy followed by a delete. That is a better IMAP server than several paid providers offer, and it makes AOL an unusually well-behaved mailbox to automate.
Known limits with AOL Mail
- AOL's submission server announces a maximum message size of roughly 41 MB. Attachment reads through mcpemails are capped at 25 MB per request.
- An app password stays valid after you change your AOL password. Deleting it on the AOL Account Security page is the only way to cut off access.
AOL Mail and AI: common questions
Does Claude work with AOL Mail?
Not on its own. Claude has no built-in AOL connector. Connecting an MCP server such as mcpemails to your AOL mailbox over IMAP, using an AOL app password, gives Claude read, search, send, reply, schedule and organize access to it, and the same connection works from Cursor, ChatGPT and other MCP clients.
What are the AOL Mail IMAP and SMTP settings?
IMAP is imap.aol.com on port 993 with implicit TLS. SMTP is smtp.aol.com on port 465, also implicit TLS. The username is your complete AOL address and the password is an AOL app password rather than your account password. Both hosts were confirmed from a live TLS connection on the date shown on this page.
Why is my AOL password rejected?
AOL does not accept your ordinary account password from third-party mail applications. You need an app password from the AOL Account Security page. The second common cause is generating one in the wrong place: an app password created inside a Yahoo account will not work for an AOL address, even though the two services share the same mail platform.
Is AOL Mail the same as Yahoo Mail?
They run on the same infrastructure and behave almost identically over IMAP, but they are separate accounts with separate hostnames and separate security pages. Connect an aol.com address using the AOL hosts and an AOL app password. Connect a yahoo.com, ymail.com or rocketmail.com address as Yahoo. Credentials do not cross between the two.
Do old aim.com and country AOL addresses still work?
Yes, provided the mailbox is still active. They are ordinary AOL Mail accounts on the same hosts, use the same app password flow, and take the full address as the username. Very old configuration guides list AOL settings from before the move to this platform, so use the hosts on this page rather than whatever a decade-old forum post shows.
Is my AOL mail stored on your servers?
No. Messages are fetched live from AOL over IMAP for each request and handed to your AI client. Credentials are encrypted at rest and message bodies are not retained. Deleting the app password in AOL Account Security ends the connection at their end immediately.
Give your AI an AOL Mail inbox
Connect AOL Mail in minutes. One inbox free forever, no card required.