Questions, answered.

It’s the little logo or photo that shows next to your name in someone’s inbox. When it’s there, your emails look legitimate and get opened more; when it’s missing, you’re a grey circle with initials. InboxAvatar makes sure that avatar is your brand, in every major inbox.

BIMI is one way to show a logo, but the version Gmail honors needs a paid certificate (a VMC or CMC) that runs roughly $900–1,350 per year per domain — and a VMC requires a registered trademark. InboxAvatar reaches the same inboxes without any certificate or trademark, because we use each provider’s own mechanism — self-asserted BIMI for Yahoo/AOL, a Google account photo for Gmail, and Apple Business Connect for Apple Mail. (Outlook is the exception, and it’s an industry-wide one — see “Will my logo show in Outlook?” below.)

No. That’s one of the biggest reasons people come to us — the trademark requirement locks most small businesses out of the certificate route entirely. We don’t require one.

Yes. Gmail is exactly where free “self-asserted” BIMI fails and where a certificate would otherwise be required. We cover Gmail as part of every paid plan — no certificate needed.

Honestly: not for external recipients — and that’s true of every service, not just us. Microsoft is the one major provider that doesn’t display sender logos to people outside your own organization. It ignores the BIMI standard entirely, so no certificate (VMC or CMC) helps either. What we can do is set your Microsoft 365 profile photo, which shows to colleagues in your own organization and to anyone who’s saved you as a contact. The good news: Gmail, Apple Mail, and Yahoo/AOL — where we do put your logo — are together about 90% of consumer inboxes, so the overwhelming majority of the people you email still see your brand.

No. You keep sending from wherever you send today. We don’t route or relay your mail — we set up the records and profiles that make the inbox show your logo when your mail arrives.

Your domain and your logo. From there we handle the DNS records, DMARC, and the per-provider setup. Most of it we can do for you; anything that needs a click on your end, we walk you through.

Because inbox identity isn’t set-and-forget. Google, Apple, Microsoft and Yahoo change their rules constantly, and a static setup quietly breaks. Your subscription is us hosting your logo, holding the accounts and registrations that carry it, monitoring that your mail keeps landing, and adapting every time a provider moves the goalposts — so your logo keeps showing.

For the BIMI channels (Yahoo/AOL/Fastmail), yes — we host and serve the logo file your DNS points to. For Apple, the logo lives with Apple via Business Connect and we manage that registration for you. For Microsoft 365 we set your profile photo — though note Microsoft only shows that inside your own organization (see the Outlook question). Either way, keeping it live is part of the service.

No. We don’t connect to your mailbox, we don’t read your mail, and we don’t send email as you. We only manage the public-facing branding — DNS records and provider profile photos — that decide how your logo appears.

Our avatar plans (Solo, Business, Agency) put your logo across every major inbox using each provider’s own mechanism, tiered by how many domains you cover. Concierge is a different kind of plan: it includes a real Google Workspace inbox — an actual professional mailbox at your own domain — which we provision and fully administer for you, with the avatar set through Google admin for maximum reliability. It’s priced per inbox and includes deliverability monitoring and priority support.

We stop maintaining the setup, and over time the hosted pieces come down. There’s nothing punitive — but because we’re the ones keeping it live across providers, the logo relies on the subscription staying active.