The mailbox is the product. Everything else is a draft.

A lot of “AI SDR” products are writers. They make copy. Then they ask you to paste it somewhere, or they send from infrastructure you do not control, with a from-name that is almost you.

LeadHootz is opinionated: campaign email sends from a connected Gmail or Outlook mailbox. LinkedIn is optional for invites and DMs. SendGrid is optional volume after the domain is authenticated. The agent drafts. Your mailbox sends. Replies come back to Unibox.

Why this is not nostalgia

Prospects reply to people. Filters treat unknown infrastructure as unknown. When something bounces, you see it on the same identity you will one day get on a Zoom with. That loop is the product.

If the popup for Google or Microsoft never appears, allow pop-ups for app.leadhootz.com and try Connect again. This is boring. Boring is how inboxes get connected. University: Connect your inbox.

When to add SendGrid

When a human mailbox’s daily cap is the actual bottleneck, and SPF/DKIM/DMARC are done. Not because a dashboard looked more “enterprise” on a shared IP you have never heard of.

LinkedIn is a second channel, not a substitute

Invites and DMs belong in the same sequence as email so the story does not fork. They do not replace the inbox. The meeting still gets booked like email gets booked: a real calendar, a real thread.

If your AI vendor cannot tell you whose mailbox just sent, you do not have outbound. You have a content tool with a send button.