# Robotomail Sells the Mailbox. Cotera Sells What Reads It.

> Robotomail sells mailboxes your AI agents own. Cotera sells the agents. Compare email triggers, tool integrations, and what you still have to build.

Source: https://cotera.co/robotomail-vs-cotera

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Robotomail gives your agents mailboxes they own, then hands you a webhook and gets out of the way. Cotera starts where that webhook ends: you build an agent once, reuse it across Slack, schedules, and webhooks, and email is simply another way to interact with it.

## Cotera vs Robotomail
| | Cotera | Robotomail |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Agents get their own email address | Yes | Yes |
| Inbound email starts a run | Yes | Webhook, SSE, or polling |
| The agent itself is included | Yes | No |
| Built-in tool integrations | 144 | No |
| Multi-step reasoning and tool chaining | Yes | No |
| Durable execution that survives restarts | Yes | No |
| Build it without writing code | Yes | No |
| Schedule and webhook triggers too | Yes | No |
| Runs against your data warehouse | Yes | No |
| Stored mailbox with thread resolution | No | Yes |
| Attachment storage with presigned URLs | No | Yes |
| Custom sending domains with DKIM, SPF, DMARC | No | Yes |
| Per-mailbox send limits and suppression lists | No | Yes |
| Free tier | Yes (1,000 credits) | No (3-day trial) |
| Entry paid plan | $0 pay-as-you-go | $19/mo |

## FAQ
### Is Cotera a Robotomail alternative?

Only for part of the job. Robotomail is mail infrastructure: an API that creates mailboxes your agents own, resolves threads, stores attachments, and tells you when something arrives over a webhook, an SSE stream, or a poll. What it does not include is the agent. Cotera is the opposite shape. You build an agent once and reuse it wherever the work turns up — in Slack, on a schedule, from a webhook, or at an email address of its own — so email is another way to interact with an agent rather than a separate build. Teams pick Robotomail when they are writing that agent themselves and pick Cotera when they are not.

### Can Cotera receive email like Robotomail?

For triggering work, yes. Add an email trigger and Cotera mints an address such as bugs-8ba1c7@inbound.cotera.ai. Anything sent, forwarded, copied, or blind-copied to it starts a run, and the message arrives as a normalized payload: sender, recipients, subject, both bodies, attachment names, and the SPF, DKIM, and spam-score results. The Message-ID doubles as the idempotency key, so a delivery that gets retried upstream does not run your workflow twice.

### What does Robotomail do that Cotera does not?

Robotomail keeps the mailbox. Threads are resolved and stored, attachments land in cloud storage behind presigned URLs, and each mailbox carries its own send limits and suppression list. It also provisions custom domains and configures DKIM, SPF, and DMARC for you. Cotera mints a trigger address rather than a browsable mailbox, records attachment filenames rather than their contents, and sends through whichever Gmail, Outlook, or SendGrid account you have connected. If your agent needs to own and search a real mailbox, that is Robotomail territory.

### How does pricing compare?

They meter different things. Robotomail prices mailboxes and volume, starting at $19/month for 10 mailboxes and 15,000 emails, then $79/month for 50 mailboxes and $199/month for 200, after a three-day trial. Cotera prices the work the agent does: $0 to start with 1,000 free credits and no card, and $500/month on the Team plan for 100,000 credits and unlimited seats. High mail volume across many mailboxes favours Robotomail. A handful of agents doing expensive reasoning and tool work favours Cotera.

### Do I still have to write code with Cotera?

No. With Robotomail the mailbox is an API call and the agent behind it is yours to write, deploy, and keep running. With Cotera you describe the agent in plain English, pick the tools it may use, and copy the address off the trigger card. The person forwarding mail to it is usually the one who used to handle those messages by hand.