Connect Kolab Now to Claude,
Cursor, ChatGPT, any MCP client
Give your AI agent a real Kolab Now inbox. Read, search, send, reply, schedule and organize mail over IMAP from Switzerland, in every MCP client rather than just one.
Claude cannot reach Kolab Now on its own. mcpemails is a hosted MCP server that connects it over IMAP at imap.kolabnow.com on port 993, and SMTP at smtp.kolabnow.com on port 465, authenticating with your primary Kolab Now address and your account password, so Claude, Cursor or any MCP client can read, search, send and organize that mail. Those two hostnames are used no matter what domain your address sits on, including your own. One inbox is free, forever.
How Kolab Now connects: Cyrus IMAP and your primary address
Kolab Now serves IMAP at imap.kolabnow.com on port 993 with implicit TLS, and SMTP at smtp.kolabnow.com on port 465. The backend is Cyrus IMAP, which matters more than it sounds: unlike most of the privacy providers, Kolab Now advertises MOVE, UIDPLUS and SPECIAL-USE, so folder roles resolve properly and moves are atomic. Authentication is a normal password against your primary email address. Kolab Now's documentation is emphatic that even when your address is on mykolab.com or a domain you own, you still connect to those same two hostnames.
The exact KolabNow 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.kolabnow.com | 993 | TLS (implicit) |
| SMTP (outgoing) | smtp.kolabnow.com | 465 | TLS (implicit) |
Verified 2026-08-31: imap.kolabnow.com answered a TLS connection and identified itself as an IMAP server under that name. It advertises LOGIN, PLAIN authentication.
Sign in with: Your primary Kolab Now email address, not an alias and not a bare username.
A KolabNow inbox your agent can actually use
Nine action-based MCP tools: send, reply, forward, schedule, and organize. Your agent finishes the job inside KolabNow.
- 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 KolabNow in four steps
From sign-up to first AI email in a couple of minutes.
Create your free mcpemails account
Sign up at mcpemails.com. The free plan connects one inbox, forever, with no card. You get an MCP URL and a key at the end of it.
Find your primary address, not an alias
Kolab Now authenticates on the account's primary email address. If your mail arrives at several addresses, or the mailbox lives on your own domain, only the primary one signs in. It is shown in your Kolab Now account settings; an alias in the username field produces a plain authentication failure with no hint about why.
Add the mailbox in mcpemails
Choose IMAP / SMTP, enter that primary address and your Kolab Now password. The hosts are prefilled at imap.kolabnow.com and smtp.kolabnow.com, which are correct regardless of your address's domain. Credentials are encrypted at rest; mail is fetched live per request and not kept.
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 KolabNow
Your domain never appears in the hostname
This trips up custom-domain customers constantly. Kolab Now hosts addresses on kolabnow.com, on the older mykolab.com, and on domains you bring yourself, but there is no per-domain mail host: imap.kolabnow.com and smtp.kolabnow.com serve all of them. Do not follow the usual instinct of guessing mail.yourdomain.com, and do not trust an autodiscover result that points somewhere else.
Kolab Now refuses clients that fail its TLS requirements
Kolab Now's own knowledge base says that if your client is not listed and the generic guide does not work, the client most likely does not meet the PCI security standards their servers enforce, and it will not connect at all. Old software fails here rather than negotiating downward. Nothing on the mailbox needs enabling, so a connection that dies before authentication is usually the client's TLS stack, not your account.
It is one of the few here with full MOVE and SPECIAL-USE support
Kolab Now's Cyrus server advertises MOVE, UIDPLUS, SPECIAL-USE and IDLE. In practice that means an agent filing mail issues a real MOVE rather than the COPY, flag and expunge dance most of the other providers on this list force, gets the new UID back immediately, and identifies Sent, Drafts and Trash by their declared role instead of guessing from names. Bulk reorganizing a Kolab Now mailbox is measurably faster and less error-prone as a result.
Shared and group folders show up in the same tree
Cyrus exposes shared folders and any folders shared with you alongside your own. If your account belongs to a group, an agent listing folders will see them and can file mail into them. Say which folder you mean when you give an instruction, or scope the instruction to the Inbox, otherwise a broad request can touch mail that other people also read.
Known limits with KolabNow
- Connecting a Kolab Now mailbox to an AI client means that AI provider reads your message content. Kolab Now's Swiss hosting and Kolab's free-software stack do not extend to the AI client at the other end of the connection. mcpemails fetches mail live from Kolab Now per request and does not store message bodies, and credentials are encrypted at rest, but the text still reaches Claude, Cursor or whichever client you point at it. If a mailbox is on Kolab Now specifically to keep its contents in one jurisdiction, connecting it to a large AI vendor undoes that.
- Messages encrypted to your OpenPGP or S/MIME key arrive over IMAP as ciphertext. mcpemails holds no private key, so an agent can read the headers and file the message but not the body.
- Kolab Now has no app or device password, so the credential mcpemails stores is your account password. Revoking a single connection means changing the account password.
KolabNow and AI: common questions
Does Claude work with Kolab Now?
Not directly. Claude has no built-in Kolab Now connector and cannot speak IMAP by itself. Connecting an MCP server such as mcpemails to your Kolab Now mailbox gives Claude read, search, send, reply, schedule and organize access, and the same connection is reusable from Cursor and other MCP clients.
What are the Kolab Now IMAP and SMTP settings?
IMAP is imap.kolabnow.com on port 993 with implicit TLS. SMTP is smtp.kolabnow.com on port 465, also implicit TLS, with STARTTLS on 587 offered only as a temporary workaround. The username is your primary Kolab Now email address. Both hosts were verified from a live TLS connection.
I use my own domain with Kolab Now. Do the settings change?
No. Kolab Now documents that even when your primary address is on mykolab.com or on a domain you own, you connect to imap.kolabnow.com and smtp.kolabnow.com. There is no per-domain mail hostname to configure, and inventing one is the most common reason a custom-domain setup fails.
Why is my Kolab Now login rejected?
Check that you are using the account's primary email address rather than an alias, and that you have entered the full address rather than a bare username. If authentication never even starts, your client may not meet the TLS requirements Kolab Now enforces, which fails before any password is checked.
Is my Kolab Now mail stored on your servers?
No. Messages are fetched live from imap.kolabnow.com over IMAP for each request and passed straight to your AI client. Credentials are encrypted at rest; message bodies are not retained. Whatever the AI client reads does reach that AI provider, which is a separate and deliberate decision on your part.
Give your AI a Kolab Now inbox
Connect Kolab Now in minutes. One inbox free forever, no card required.