how do i get an email for my openclaw

You set up OpenClaw. It browses the web, writes code, manages files. Then you want it to handle email and suddenly you're knee-deep in OAuth scopes, Google Cloud Console projects, and app passwords stored in plaintext config files. This is the part where most people spend their evening instead of building something useful.

There are four real paths to giving your OpenClaw agent email. I've used all of them. Here's the honest version.

the fast answer#

Head to lobstermail.ai/skill and follow the instructions. Then tell your agent: "get yourself an email inbox."

That's it. Your agent provisions its own address, receives mail immediately, and you didn't touch a single Google Cloud setting. The whole thing takes about a minute.

If you want the full step-by-step walkthrough with code examples, that's at give your OpenClaw agent an email in 60 seconds. But for most people, the sentence above is the entire setup.

option 1: gmail wrappers (himalaya, gog)#

This is what most tutorials recommend, because Gmail is what most people think of when they hear "email."

Himalaya is a CLI email client that connects to Gmail over IMAP/SMTP. It's the most-installed email skill on ClawHub. You configure credentials in a config file, and your agent runs shell commands to read and send messages. IMAP means polling every 1-5 minutes instead of getting mail instantly.

Gog goes wider. It wraps all of Google Workspace: Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Sheets. If you already pay for Workspace ($6-18/month per seat), Gog gives your agent the full suite. Setup requires the gogcli authentication tool, a GCP project with billing enabled, and OAuth scoping. If you want real-time delivery instead of polling, add Google Cloud Pub/Sub to the list.

One person in OpenClaw Discussion #4220 put it bluntly: "I've invested nearly three days and about $300 and can't believe how potentially cool, but actually shitty this is."

Both options share a deeper problem. Your agent sits inside your personal inbox. Every bank notification, every medical record, every private thread. Summer Yue, a Meta alignment researcher, found out what that means when her OpenClaw agent started bulk-deleting emails during a triage session. She had to physically run across the room to kill the process.

Gmail wrappers work for quick experiments. For anything beyond that, you're handing your agent the keys to your entire digital life and hoping nothing goes wrong.

option 2: agentmail#

AgentMail is the most established dedicated service. YC-backed, proper infrastructure, real deliverability with DKIM, SPF, and DMARC handled for you. Your agent gets its own inbox through a REST API with webhook-based delivery.

The catch: a human sets everything up. You create an account in their dashboard, generate API keys, store them in your agent's environment, then the agent can create inboxes. It works, but the agent can't bootstrap itself.

Pricing is the other friction point. The free tier gives you 3 inboxes and 3,000 emails per month. After that it jumps to $20/month for 10 inboxes, then $200/month for 150. If you're running 15-20 agents, you're either too big for the $20 plan or overpaying on the $200 one. The gap between those two tiers is the most common complaint in their Hacker News threads.

For a full breakdown: OpenClaw email options compared.

option 3: agenticmail (self-hosted)#

AgenticMail is open-source and self-hosted. Your agent gets email and SMS through a plugin you run on your own infrastructure. MIT licensed, no usage fees. If you want total control and don't mind managing your own SMTP server, DNS records, and deliverability reputation, this is the DIY path.

The tradeoff is obvious: you're now responsible for everything that a managed service handles for you. SPF, DKIM, DMARC configuration. Bounce handling. IP reputation. Spam folder avoidance. For a side project, that's a lot of ops work that has nothing to do with what your agent actually does.

option 4: lobstermail#

This is the one I built, so take my bias into account. But here's what makes it different from the options above.

Your agent signs itself up. No human creates an account, no one generates API keys, no one configures environment variables. The agent installs the skill, calls one function, and has a working email address. That's the self-hatching model: the agent provisions its own shell on the reef without waiting on anyone.

Receiving is free on every tier. Sending unlocks after a quick verification (an X post or a credit card check, both free). The Builder plan at $9/month gives you 500 sends per day, custom domains, and up to 10 inboxes. There's no cliff between tiers where the price jumps tenfold.

On the security side, every incoming email gets scanned for prompt injection across six categories before your agent processes it. The SDK exposes safeBodyForLLM() so your agent can read email content with injection patterns stripped out. None of the Gmail wrappers do this. AgentMail doesn't either.

And because the inbox belongs to the agent, not to you, the blast radius of anything going wrong is limited to the agent's mail. Your personal inbox stays untouched.

I wrote a longer piece on why this setup keeps getting overlooked.

so which one should you pick#

If you want to experiment for an afternoon and already have Gmail: Himalaya is fine. Just know what you're exposing.

If you want production infrastructure and don't mind doing the setup yourself: AgentMail is solid.

If you want to self-host everything and own the full stack: AgenticMail.

If you want your agent to handle the whole thing, from signup to receiving its first email, in about a minute: head to lobstermail.ai/skill.

For a side-by-side feature comparison of all four options, I put together a detailed breakdown that covers pricing, setup time, security, and real-time delivery.

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Give your agent its own email. Get started with LobsterMail — it's free.