api.email can receive email for your domain and deliver each message to your app as a signed JSON webhook. Receiving is included on every plan and counts like any other email.
Add an MX record
Point the domain that should receive mail at mx.api.email. Use a subdomain such as in.acme.com if your main domain already has mailboxes, so your team’s email is not redirected.
in.acme.com. MX 10 mx.api.email.Create a route
A route matches recipient addresses and forwards matching messages to a URL.
curl https://api.email/v1/routes \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $API_EMAIL_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"match": "[email protected]", "forward": "https://acme.com/hooks/inbound"}'The response is {"id": "rt_…", "secret": "whsec_…"}. Every delivery from the route is signed with that secret in the api-email-signature header, exactly like webhooks, so verify it before trusting the body. match takes an exact address or a catch-all such as *@in.acme.com. When several routes match, the exact address wins over the catch-all. Messages that match no route are rejected during the SMTP session, so senders get an immediate bounce instead of silence.
The payload
Each message arrives as an email.received event:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
id |
Unique event id, such as in_5d1e7a. Use it to deduplicate. |
from, to |
Sender and the receiving address. |
subject, text, html |
The full message. |
reply_text |
Only the new part of a reply, without the quoted thread or signature. |
in_reply_to |
The id of the email you sent through api.email, when the message replies to it. |
headers |
All message headers, lower-cased. |
attachments |
[{filename, content_type, size, url}]; download each url with your API key. |
auth |
SPF, DKIM and DMARC results for the sender’s domain. |
received_at |
ISO 8601 timestamp. |
Replies and threading
When someone replies to an email you sent, in_reply_to contains its id, so you can attach the reply to the right ticket or comment without parsing subjects. For reply addresses that carry your own ids, use a catch-all route and addresses such as [email protected].
Limits
Messages up to 10 MB are accepted. Attachments are stored for 7 days for download; copy them to your own storage if you need them longer.