SLA alerts watch your team's inboxes and send an email alert when a message that needs a reply has waited longer than your target. AI reads each incoming email to decide whether it actually needs a response, so you aren't alerted about newsletters and FYIs.
Alerts can go to the person who received the email, to their manager, or to both.
Part of the AI add-on · Gmail and Outlook · Nothing to install
Response time reports are great for coaching, but by the time a slow reply shows up in an average, the customer has already waited. And the emails that do the most damage are the ones nobody answers at all. They never appear in a response time average, because there's no reply to measure.
SLA alerts close that gap by flagging the email while there's still time to reply.
Each incoming email is checked by AI, so alerts are about real questions and requests, not notifications.
Choose how long an email can wait before an alert goes out: 30 minutes for inbound leads, a business day for vendors.
Notify the responsible agent, their manager, or anyone else you choose.
Optionally count only time inside the responsible agent's business hours.
Skip cc'd emails, skip internal emails, stay quiet if any recipient replied, and treat a forward as a reply.
Add senders you never want scanned or alerted on.
Permissions and privacy: creating SLA alerts requires Owner, Team Management or AI Insights permissions. Because alerts depend on AI, message bodies are scanned for the inboxes you monitor; other inboxes stay headers-only. Read the setup guide · Find unanswered emails
Alert the rep and their sales manager when an inbound lead hasn't had a reply within 30 minutes.
Alert the team lead when a customer email has waited 4 business hours without an answer.
Alert the account lead when a client email to anyone on the team goes a full business day without a reply, unless a teammate already answered.
| Option | Catches emails that need a reply | Changes how your team works |
|---|---|---|
| EmailAnalytics SLA alerts | Yes, in real time, only for emails that need a response | No, the team stays in Gmail or Outlook |
| Follow-up flags and reminders | Only when each person remembers to set them | Yes: a manual habit for every email |
| Help desk software | Yes, once email moves into tickets | Yes: a new tool and workflow |
Average and first response time for every person and team, measured within work hours.
Learn more →Set a response time goal and see how many replies breached it, person by person.
Learn more →AI scores incoming and outgoing email sentiment from 1 to 10 and charts it over time.
Learn more →Credit every reply from support@ or sales@ to the agent who sent it.
Learn more →FAQ
An SLA alert is an email EmailAnalytics sends when a message that needs a reply has gone unanswered for longer than the time limit you set. It's a warning before the SLA is breached, not a report afterwards.
AI reads each incoming email in the inboxes you monitor and decides whether it actually requires a response, so you aren't alerted about newsletters, receipts or FYIs.
You choose. Alerts can go to the person who received the email (the responsible agent), to managers, or to anyone else you select.
Yes. Turn on "Consider only business hours" and only time inside the responsible agent's business hours counts toward the time limit.
Not if you don't want them. You can limit alerts to external emails and to emails where the recipient was in the To line, skip the alert if any recipient replied, treat a forward as a reply, and add senders to an ignore list.
Yes, for the inboxes you choose to monitor. Deciding whether an email needs a reply requires AI to read the message body. Inboxes without AI features turned on stay headers-only: addresses, timestamps and subject lines.
Yes. EmailAnalytics works with Gmail, Google Workspace, Outlook and Microsoft 365.
Yes. SLA alerts are part of the EmailAnalytics AI add-on, which is billed per AI-enabled inbox on top of your plan and also includes sentiment analysis and Response Insights. Current prices are on the pricing page.
Connect Gmail or Outlook in about two minutes and set up your first SLA alert today.
