Connect your Free.fr inbox
to Claude, Cursor, any MCP client
Free gives every subscriber a mailbox and plain IMAP access to it. mcpemails connects that inbox so your AI agent can read, search, send, reply and file mail from any MCP client rather than one app.
Claude cannot reach a Free.fr mailbox on its own. mcpemails is a hosted MCP server that connects it over IMAP at imap.free.fr on port 993, authenticating with your complete address and the password of your Free account. Free issues no app-specific passwords and requires nothing to be switched on first, which makes it one of the simpler providers to connect, though its IMAP server is unusually bare and that has consequences covered below. Once connected, Claude, Cursor or any other MCP client can read, search, send and organise that mail, and one inbox is free, forever.
How Free.fr connects: IMAP with the account password
Free serves IMAP at imap.free.fr on port 993 over TLS and submission at smtp.free.fr, which accepts implicit TLS on port 465 and STARTTLS on 587. The credential is the password of your Free account, the one you use in the espace abonné, and the username is the complete address rather than the bare login. Free requires SMTP authentication, so a client that leaves the outgoing username and password blank will connect and then fail on the first send. There is no app password to generate and no separate mail-client setting to enable, which sounds simple and is, but the server itself is minimal: it advertises almost none of the IMAP extensions that modern clients expect, and that is where the surprises live.
The exact Free 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.free.fr | 993 | TLS (implicit) |
| SMTP (outgoing) | smtp.free.fr | 465 | TLS (implicit) |
Verified 2026-08-31: imap.free.fr answered a TLS connection and identified itself as an IMAP server under that name. It advertises PLAIN authentication.
Sign in with: Your complete address including the domain, such as name@free.fr. Free's own instruction is to enter the full address, not the short login.
A Free inbox your agent can actually use
Nine action-based MCP tools: send, reply, forward, schedule, and organize. Your agent finishes the job inside Free.
- 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 Free in four steps
From sign-up to first AI email in a couple of minutes.
Create a free mcpemails account
Sign up at mcpemails.com. The free plan connects one inbox and does not ask for a card.
Know which password you are about to use
The mailbox password is the password of your Free account. Changing it in the espace abonné changes it for every mail client at the same moment, including this one, so if you rotate it later expect to update the connection. If you have forgotten it, reset it there rather than looking for a mail-specific credential; there is not one.
Enter the complete address in mcpemails
Choose IMAP / SMTP and type the whole address, name@free.fr, in the username field. Free's own documentation says to give the complete address including the domain. The hosts and ports below are prefilled and were verified from a live TLS connection.
Paste the MCP URL into your AI
Drop https://mcpemails.com/api/mcp into Claude, Cursor or ChatGPT, authorise, and your agent has the inbox.
Comparing providers first? See the email provider compatibility matrix
What actually goes wrong with Free
Free advertises AUTH=PLAIN only, and no SASL-IR with it
The capability banner from imap.free.fr is about as short as an IMAP banner gets. It offers AUTH=PLAIN and nothing else, and it does not advertise SASL-IR, so the server refuses the one-step form that sends credentials alongside the AUTHENTICATE command. A client hard-wired to the LOGIN mechanism, or one that assumes SASL-IR, gets a bare refusal that reads like a wrong password. mcpemails retries the two-step exchange instead of treating that refusal as final.
The outgoing server accepts mechanisms the incoming one does not
smtp.free.fr advertises PLAIN, LOGIN, CRAM-MD5 and DIGEST-MD5, a much richer list than the single PLAIN on the IMAP side. So the two halves of the same account behave differently in the same client, and a tool that probes one and reuses the answer for the other can pick a mechanism that only works in one direction. Configure them separately.
No MOVE, no UIDPLUS, no SPECIAL-USE, no IDLE
Free's server implements the base protocol and very little on top. Filing a message runs as COPY, then STORE the deleted flag, then EXPUNGE rather than one atomic command, and because UIDPLUS is missing the server does not report the id of the new copy, so it has to be found by searching the destination. Nothing announces which folder is Sent or Trash, so those are matched by name, and on a French mailbox the names are usually the French ones. Without IDLE there is no push, so new mail is found by polling.
One password, one blast radius
Because the mail credential is your Free account password rather than a per-application secret, anything you paste it into holds the keys to the account, and revoking access to one tool means changing the password for all of them. That is a property of Free's design rather than a criticism of it, but it is worth knowing before you connect. mcpemails encrypts stored credentials at rest, and you can disconnect the inbox from the dashboard at any time.
Known limits with Free
- Free's SMTP host announces a maximum message size of about 75 MB, so a send with larger attachments is refused before it leaves.
- Moves are not atomic and folder roles are matched by name, because MOVE, UIDPLUS and SPECIAL-USE are not implemented on this server.
- No IDLE, so new mail is discovered by polling rather than pushed.
Free and AI: common questions
Does Claude work with Free.fr email?
Not directly. Claude has no built-in Free connector. Connecting an MCP server such as mcpemails to the mailbox over IMAP gives Claude read, search, send, reply, schedule and organise access to your free.fr mail, and the same connection works in Cursor, ChatGPT and other MCP clients.
What are the Free.fr IMAP and SMTP settings?
IMAP is imap.free.fr on port 993 with implicit TLS. SMTP is smtp.free.fr, on port 465 with implicit TLS or port 587 with STARTTLS, and authentication is required. Both hosts were verified from a live TLS connection. The username is your complete email address and the password is your Free account password.
Does Free.fr need an app password or an IMAP toggle?
No to both. Free issues no app-specific passwords and there is no mail-client switch to enable in the webmail before a client can log in. Your Free account password authenticates directly, which is why a rejected login here is usually a mechanism problem or a genuinely wrong password rather than a hidden setting.
Why does my Free.fr mail send but not receive, or the other way round?
Because the incoming and outgoing servers advertise different authentication mechanisms. IMAP offers only PLAIN and no SASL-IR, while SMTP offers PLAIN, LOGIN, CRAM-MD5 and DIGEST-MD5. A client that picks one mechanism for both ends can succeed in one direction and fail in the other, which looks like a partial outage but is a configuration mismatch.
Is my Free.fr mail stored on your servers?
No. Messages are fetched live from Free over IMAP for each request and passed to your AI client. Credentials are encrypted at rest and message bodies are not retained.
Give your AI a Free.fr inbox
No app password, no toggle, no waiting. One inbox free forever, no card required.