Email and Messages
Platform email
Send invoices and other documents by email from our address with no setup, within a monthly allowance of 20 emails on Free and 100 on Team.
Platform email lets you email documents to your clients the moment you sign up, without connecting a mailbox of your own. Messages go out from our sending address on behalf of your business, and replies go straight to you. Each account gets a monthly allowance: 20 emails on Free and 100 on Team. If you need more, connect your own SMTP, which has no monthly limit from us.
How it works
Every document can be delivered by email, share link, PDF download or copied link, from the web app, the API and MCP. When you send by email, Free Invoice Automation chooses a sender for that message. Platform email is one sender; your own SMTP mailbox is the other one available at launch.
What your client sees
A platform email is sent:
| Part | Value |
|---|---|
| From address | [email protected] |
| From name | {Business} via Free Invoice Automation, for example "Acme Studio via Free Invoice Automation" |
| Reply-To | your business email, so a reply reaches you, not us |
| Footer | follows your plan's branding: "Powered by Free Invoice Automation" on Free, none on Team |
| Report link | every platform email has a link the recipient can use to report abuse |
The email carries the document's pay page link, so your client can open, download and pay the invoice online. Nothing needs printing or posting.
How the sender is chosen
For each send, the sender is resolved in this order:
- A sender set on the document itself.
- The client's preferred sender.
- The business default sender.
- Platform email, but only if your account still has quota left this month.
So once you connect your own SMTP for a business, it becomes that business's default and platform email is no longer used for it unless you choose it on a client or a document.
The monthly allowance
| Plan | Platform emails a month |
|---|---|
| Free | 20 |
| Team | 100 |
- The counter resets on the first of each month. Unused emails do not roll over.
- Every email sent through platform email counts, including reminder and recurring-invoice emails that go out through it.
- Emails sent through your own SMTP never count.
- At 80% of the allowance you see a warning when you send.
- At 100% the send is blocked. The send dialog offers Connect your own SMTP (unlimited), and your document stays saved as a draft, so nothing is lost.
You can see how many emails you have used and how many are left as a meter in Settings > Email. The same numbers appear in the usage card at the bottom of the app sidebar, with the reset date.
The allowance values are plan settings. If they change, this page and the pricing page change with them, and the meter in Settings > Email always shows the value that applies to your account.
Before your first platform email
Platform email is available only after you verify your email address. We send a verification link when you sign up. Until you click it, sending through platform email is refused with "verify your email first" (API error email_not_verified). This rule protects your clients and our sending address from people who sign up only to send spam.
Send a document with platform email
Verify your email address
Open the verification link we sent when you signed up. You only do this once.
Open the document and click Send
Choose Email as the delivery method. If no SMTP is connected for the business, platform email is used.
Check the preview
The app shows the email exactly as your client will receive it, with the sender name, subject, message and attachment, before anything is sent.
Confirm the send
The email goes out, the send is logged in the document's activity, and your monthly counter goes up by one.
Clicking Send twice does not send two emails. Each send is unique per document, event and channel, so a retry or a double click is recognised and ignored.
Through the API and MCP
Sending works the same way on every surface. First preview, then send with "confirm": true (an API key or MCP token in auto_send mode can skip the confirmation). See Drafts and confirmations.
curl -X POST "https://api.freeinvoiceautomation.com/v1/documents/0193f2b4-5a6b-7c8d-9e0f-1a2b3c4d5e6f/send-preview" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $FIA_API_KEY"Over MCP, your assistant calls preview_send and then send_document. Read your remaining allowance with Get usage, which returns platform emails used and the quota, with an 80% warning flag. List messages shows each send, its sender and its status (queued, sent, failed or bounced).
curl "https://api.freeinvoiceautomation.com/v1/usage" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $FIA_API_KEY"Endpoint pages: Preview a send · Send a document · Get usage · List messages.
Abuse controls
Platform email shares one sending address across every account, so a few rules keep it trusted by mail providers:
- Verified email only, as described above.
- Monthly allowance per plan.
- Per-minute rate limit per account. Sends over the limit wait or are refused with
rate_limited. - Link and content scoring on every message before it goes out.
- Report link in every platform email, and a takedown process for accounts that send abuse.
These controls do not apply to your own SMTP in the same way, because mail from your own server is sent under your own name and reputation.
Plan changes
If a Team account moves back to Free (for example after a failed renewal), the allowance becomes 20 a month from that moment. If the account has already sent 20 or more platform emails that month, platform email pauses until the next month (API error platform_mail_paused). Your own SMTP is not affected, and pay pages keep working. On Team, the "Powered by" footer is removed from new emails; on Free it is shown again on new emails.
Errors
| Code | When |
|---|---|
email_not_verified | You have not verified your email address yet. |
quota_exceeded | Your monthly allowance is used up. details.suggestion is connect_smtp. |
platform_mail_paused | The account moved to Free after already sending 20 or more platform emails this month. details.suggestion is connect_smtp. |
rate_limited | Too many sends in one minute. Retry after the Retry-After header. |
confirmation_required | A send without "confirm": true from a draft_only key or token. The response includes the preview. |
permission_denied | Your role lacks documents.send. |
See Errors for the error shape.
Permissions
| Action | Permission key |
|---|---|
| Preview a send, list sent messages | documents.view |
| Send a document by email | documents.send |
| See the email meter and usage | settings.view |
By default Owner, Admin and Editor can send; Viewer and Accountant can look but not send. See Roles and permissions.
Do unused emails carry over to next month?
No. The counter resets on the first of each month and unused emails do not roll over.
Can I change the From address of platform email?
No. Platform email always sends from our address with your business name in the From name, and replies go to your business email. To send from your own address, connect your own SMTP.
What happens to a send that was blocked by the quota?
Nothing is lost: the document stays a draft. Connect your own SMTP and send again, or wait for the counter to reset on the first of the month.