Smart Categorization
MailFellow uses AI to automatically classify every incoming email into one of five categories. Categories appear as color-coded badges on email notifications, helping your team instantly prioritize and route their work.
Categories
| Category | Badge | What it means | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| Support | 🎫 Support | Help requests, bug reports, technical questions | "I can't log in to my account", "The export feature is broken" |
| Sales | 💰 Sales | Purchase inquiries, pricing questions, demo requests | "What are your enterprise pricing options?", "Can we schedule a demo?" |
| Billing | 🧾 Billing | Invoices, payment issues, subscription changes | "I need a copy of my invoice", "Please cancel my subscription" |
| Spam | ⚠️ Spam | Unwanted, promotional, or automated bulk emails | "You've won a prize!", mass marketing newsletters |
| Other | 📧 Other | Everything that does not fit the above categories | Internal updates, meeting invites, general correspondence |
How It Works
- An email arrives at your connected account
- MailFellow sends the email body (up to 4,000 characters) to your configured AI provider
- The AI analyzes the content and returns a category
- The category badge is displayed on the email notification in your chat platform
- The category is stored in the database for filtering and reporting
Categorization happens in the same API call as summarization, so there is no additional cost or latency.
How It Looks on Each Platform
- Discord:category appears as a colored embed field with emoji
- Slack:category appears as a Block Kit section with emoji
- Telegram:category shown as bold HTML text with emoji
- WhatsApp:category shown in WhatsApp markdown with emoji
- Teams:category appears in the Adaptive Card FactSet
- Mattermost:category shown in markdown with emoji
Spam Auto-Block
MailFellow can automatically block senders whose emails are categorized as Spam. When enabled, spam emails are silently discarded and the sender is added to your block list.
- Go to Settings > Automation
- Toggle Spam Auto-Block on
- Click Save
See the full Automation guide for details. You can unblock false positives at any time from the block list.
Combining with Routing Rules
While categorization itself does not route emails, you can use it alongside routing rules to create a powerful triage system. For example:
- Route emails from known billing addresses (
@stripe.com,@paypal.com) to a #billing channel - Use the AI category badge to quickly verify the routing is correct
- Spot miscategorized emails and adjust your rules
Accuracy
Categorization accuracy depends on your AI model choice:
- Higher accuracy: GPT-4.1, Claude Sonnet 4, Gemini 2.5 Pro: better at nuanced classification
- Good and faster: GPT-4.1 Mini, Claude Haiku 4.5, Gemini 2.5 Flash: suitable for most use cases
If an email cannot be confidently classified, it defaults to Other.
Setup
Categorization is enabled automatically when you set up AI. No additional configuration is needed.