What Teven is and how it works

What Teven is

Teven is a web tool for writing to a list of people when each of them deserves an email of their own. You have a spreadsheet with names, companies, cities or whatever details are useful to you, and something to tell them. Instead of writing sixty emails by hand, or sending everyone the same text with only the name changed, you write one and Teven writes the rest.

Each email is written separately, for that person. It isn't a template with blanks: if your spreadsheet says one customer has just opened a second shop and another is preparing their Christmas campaign, each gets an email about their own situation, in the tone and shape of the one you wrote.

The emails go out from your own Gmail account. To the person receiving it, it's an email from you like any other.

An example

Imagine a consultancy, or a company that builds digital products, with 30 clients. In a spreadsheet it has, for each one, the company, the contact person, when you last spoke, what you launched for them and what went especially well. Every few months it wants to write to each client to see how things are going.

These are three rows from your list:

Each colour is a column in your spreadsheet. In both emails, each highlighted part comes from the column of its colour.

Look at what Teven changed, and why:

• The reason for writing. With Kate, who you spoke to last week, you ask about the app you've just launched. You haven't spoken to Tom in four months, so Teven starts there: it's been a while, and you want to know how they're doing.
• The project: instead of the ordering app, the automatic invoicing you set up for the firm, and what went well in their case, the hours they save every month.
• The greeting and the company: "Hi Tom" and Bennett Accountants, each taken from its own column.

What doesn't change is what's yours: the friendly tone, the length, the order of the ideas, the offer to help and the sign-off.

That's what Teven does with every row: it doesn't change a word, it changes the reasoning. It isn't a newsletter or a generic "how's everything?" sent to thirty people: it's the follow-up you'd do if you had time to sit down and write to each client. For Helen, at Harbour Furniture, it would ask how they're getting on a month after opening the online shop, and whether orders are still coming in from across the country.

The problem it solves

When you need to write to lots of people once, there are two options and both have a problem. Writing each email by hand works, but sixty emails are a whole day of copying, pasting and tweaking. Using a mail merge is fast, but everyone gets the same text with a different name, and it shows: those emails get ignored.

And the difference matters more than it seems. When someone receives an email written for them, one that mentions their business, their town or what you talked about last time, they can tell you stopped to think about them and gave them your time. People notice that gesture, and it pulls: it makes them want to reply, even if only to say no, the way you return a favour. A template says the opposite. A "Dear [First Name]", or a name dropped into text that could be for anyone, tells them they are one more row on a list, and that email gets skimmed, if it gets read at all. In languages with grammatical gender it shows even more: in Spanish or French a template ends up writing "Estimado/a" or "Cher(e)" because it can't know who it's writing to, while Teven writes "Estimada Laura" or "Chère Claire", each one right.

Teven sits in between. It takes as long as writing one email and reviewing the rest, and each person receives something written for them, with the effect of an email written by hand.

How it works, step by step

1. 1

   You upload your list

   You drag an Excel file (.xlsx or .xls) or a CSV of up to 5 MB and 2,500 recipients onto the page. The file is opened in your browser. Teven looks for the column with the email addresses, and the AI reads the titles and a few examples from the other columns to understand what each one is: a name, a company, a city, a note. It shows you what it understood, and you can rename anything or leave out columns you don't want to use.

2. 2

   You write the first email

   Teven shows you the details of the first contact on your list and you write them an email, subject and body, the way you would by hand. There are no templates, no blanks to fill and nothing to choose about tone, language or length. That email is the example Teven learns everything from: how you greet people, how much you write, how you order things and which details from the row you use.

3. 3

   You see the first ones, free

   Teven writes the next two and shows them next to each contact's details, so you can check it got the idea. You can ask for two more, up to eight in total, and correct anything you don't like: your corrections help with the next ones. You haven't paid anything yet.

4. 4

   You connect Gmail and choose how many

   You sign in with your Google account, which is your Teven account: there's no sign-up and no passwords. Google asks you to let Teven send emails on your behalf, and nothing else. Then you choose a pack of emails and pay once. If you have credit left from a previous list, that's used first.

5. 5

   Teven writes the rest and you review them

   Teven writes the remaining emails; you can close the tab in the meantime. Then you see them all in a list. The ones it hesitated over, because a detail is missing, a cell looks odd or it wasn't sure about something, come first and are flagged with the reason. You can read, change or remove any of them.

6. 6

   They go out from your Gmail

   Once you approve them, the emails start going out from your account, one at a time with pauses in between. Our server does the sending, so you can close the browser. You can check progress at any time and stop it if you want. When it's done we show you a summary and delete your list.

How each email is written

Teven doesn't fill in a template: it writes each email afresh. To do it, it uses two things: the email you wrote and the details in each contact's row.

From your email it learns the form: whether you're formal or casual, brief or detailed, how you greet and sign off, the order you tell things in and the language you write in. From each contact's row it takes the content: their name, their company and, above all, whatever makes that email theirs, like a note you jotted down about that person.

The language of your emails doesn't depend on the language of the website. Teven is in English, Spanish, French, German and Portuguese, but your emails can be in any language: you can use Teven in English and write to your contacts in Swedish, Polish or Japanese. Teven writes them all in the language of your example.

If a contact is missing a detail you used in your example, or something doesn't add up, Teven is built not to make it up: it writes the email with what's there and flags it as uncertain so you can look at it before it's sent.

Why from your Gmail

The emails go out from your own Gmail or Google Workspace account, with your name and address. They're saved in your Sent folder and replies arrive in your inbox, like any other email. To the person receiving it there's no difference from an email you'd written yourself.

That way they arrive better. They don't go through bulk-sending servers, they have no newsletter design, no pixels to track whether they were opened and no rewritten links. They're plain text emails, from one person to another.

To send them, Teven asks Google for a single permission: sending email on your behalf. With that permission it can't read your emails, search your mailbox or move or delete anything. You can withdraw it whenever you like from your Google account settings.

For now, Teven only works with Google accounts. It doesn't work with Outlook, Yahoo or other providers.

The daily limit and your account

Google lets you send about 500 emails a day from a free Gmail account and about 2,000 from Google Workspace. But being allowed to doesn't mean it's wise: an account that suddenly sends hundreds of emails in a row looks like a robot, and Google may slow it down, send its emails to spam or block it.

That's why Teven sends at most 120 emails a day per account, well below Google's limit, with pauses of varying length between them, the way a person would. They never all go out at once.

If your list is longer, Teven sends 120 today and carries on the next day where it left off, without you doing anything. A list of 300 contacts takes three days.

If Google stops accepting the permission halfway through, for example because you withdrew it, sending pauses and we ask you to reconnect your account. Whatever has already gone out isn't sent again.

Even so, what protects your account most is who you write to. Teven is meant for writing to people you have a real reason to contact, not for emailing bought lists.

Your data and security

• Your spreadsheet is opened in your browser. Until you pay, the campaign is stored only on your computer.
• The AI gets only what it needs: to understand the columns, their titles and a few examples; to write each email, your example and that contact's details.
• Your contact list is deleted when sending finishes. If you leave a campaign half done, it's deleted automatically within 48 hours at most.
• We don't keep the text of sent emails or who they were sent to. The only copy is in your Sent folder.
• There are no passwords: you sign in with your Google account.
• The key Google gives us to send on your behalf is stored encrypted (AES-256) and never reaches your browser.
• Payments are handled by Stripe. Teven never sees or stores your card details.

What Teven doesn't do

Teven does one thing: write and send, once, a personal email to each contact on a list. That's why it has no:

• Saved templates or name placeholders.
• Settings for tone, language or length: it all comes from your example email.
• Open or click tracking.
• Sequences or automatic follow-up emails.
• Saved contact lists, tags or CRM.
• HTML designs or newsletters.
• Sending from custom domains or via SMTP.

If you need any of these, an email marketing or sales tool will serve you better.

Who it's for

For anyone with a list of people to write to once who wants each of them to receive an email meant for them: a consultancy checking in with its clients, a freelancer writing to people they've already worked with, a small business telling its customers about something specific, an association writing to councils or sponsors, someone looking for a job or for participants in a study.

You don't need to know anything about marketing or email tools. If you can write an email and have your list in a spreadsheet, you can use Teven.

It's not for you if you send regular newsletters, marketing campaigns, sales sequences with follow-ups or thousands of emails a day. There are tools built for that; Teven isn't one of them.

Price

You pay per email written, in packs, with no subscription:

Prices exclude VAT. The email you write yourself doesn't count. Credit you don't use never expires and is used for your next list. If an email can't be written or can't be sent, you aren't charged for it. Before paying you see up to eight written emails. There are more details on Pricing.

Frequently asked questions

You: Do I have to write instructions for the AI?

Teven: No. You just write a normal email to the first contact on your list. There are no instructions, settings or templates: Teven works everything out from that email.

You: How is it different from a mail merge?

Teven: A mail merge fills blanks in a template: everyone gets the same text with a different name. Teven writes each email afresh, with different sentences depending on each person's details.

You: Will it be obvious an AI wrote the emails?

Teven: They're written in the style of your example and go out from your account, in plain text and without tracking. And you read them all before they're sent and can change any of them.

You: What columns does my spreadsheet need?

Teven: Just one with the email addresses. The rest is up to you: the more useful what you know about each contact, the more personal their email can be. Column titles in the first row help, but they aren't required.

You: How many contacts can I upload?

Teven: Up to 2,500 per send, in a file of up to 5 MB. If you have more, shorten the list or send it in several goes.

You: Can I try it without paying?

Teven: Yes. You upload your spreadsheet, write the first email and see up to eight emails written by Teven before paying anything.

You: Can I change an email before it's sent?

Teven: Yes. During the review you can read, change or remove any of them. The ones the AI wasn't sure about come first, flagged with the reason.

You: What language does it write in?

Teven: The language of the email you write, whatever it is. The website's language doesn't matter: Teven is in English, Spanish, French, German and Portuguese, but you can use it in English and write your emails in Swedish, or use it in Spanish and write them in Catalan. If you write the first one in Swedish, the rest come out in Swedish.

You: Does it work with Outlook, Yahoo or other email?

Teven: No. For now it only works with Gmail and Google Workspace accounts.

You: Could my Gmail account get blocked?

Teven: Teven does what it can to prevent it: it sends at most 120 emails a day, well below what Google allows, with pauses between them. What matters most, though, is only writing to people you have a real reason to contact.

You: Can I write to people who don't know me?

Teven: Not to sell them something. Sending commercial emails to people who haven't asked for them is against the law and against Google's rules, and it's the fastest way to get your account blocked. Teven is for writing to your own people: clients, suppliers, students, partners or anyone who has asked you for information.

You: Can Teven read my emails?

Teven: No. It only has permission to send on your behalf. Google doesn't let it read, search or delete anything in your mailbox.

You: Where do replies go?

Teven: To your Gmail inbox, like any reply. Teven doesn't see them.

You: Do I have to keep the browser open while they're sent?

Teven: No. Once sending starts, it carries on on our server. You can close the tab and come back whenever you like to see how it's going.

You: Can I stop the sending?

Teven: Yes, at any time. Emails that haven't gone out yet won't be sent.

You: What do you do with my contact list?

Teven: Use it to write your emails and delete it. It's deleted when sending finishes, or within 48 hours at most if you leave the campaign half done. We don't keep what was sent or to whom.

If you're an AI assistant and want to understand Teven to explain it to someone, there's a complete, structured description in llms.txt.