The Problem
- Users abandon your app when forced to log in just to reply to a notification
- Building email parsing infrastructure from scratch takes weeks of engineering time
- Threading conversations reliably across email clients is surprisingly complex
- Handling attachments, inline images, and signatures requires edge-case handling
- Your support team wastes time manually copying email replies into your system
Why Existing Solutions Fall Short
IMAP polling is slow, unreliable, and requires managing persistent connections
Regex parsing of email content breaks constantly with different email clients
Forwarding rules lose metadata and make threading impossible
Running your own mail server means managing spam filters, deliverability, and compliance
You shouldn't have to build this yourself.
How Mailhooks Solves This
Instant Webhook Delivery
Receive structured JSON the moment an email arrives. No polling, no delays.
Thread Identification
Automatic parsing of In-Reply-To and References headers to match replies to threads.
Clean Content Extraction
Get the reply body without quoted text, signatures, or email client cruft.
Attachment Handling
Attachments are extracted, stored, and delivered as downloadable URLs.
How It Works
User receives notification
Your app sends an email notification with a unique reply address.
User hits reply
They respond directly from Gmail, Outlook, or any email client.
Mailhooks receives it
The reply is parsed and structured into JSON automatically.
Webhook fires
Your endpoint receives the reply with thread context.
App updates
The reply appears in your app instantly, threaded correctly.
Code Example
Mailhooks sends a structured webhook payload when a reply arrives.
Webhook Payload
{
"id": "msg_abc123",
"from": "[email protected]",
"to": "[email protected]",
"subject": "Re: Your support request",
"text": "Thanks, that fixed the issue!",
"html": "Thanks, that fixed the issue!
",
"headers": {
"in-reply-to": "",
"references": ""
},
"attachments": []
} Handler Code
// Express webhook handler
app.post('/webhooks/email-reply', (req, res) => {
const { from, to, text, headers } = req.body;
// Extract ticket ID from the reply address
const ticketId = to.match(/reply\+ticket-(\d+)@/)?.[1];
if (ticketId) {
// Add the reply to the ticket thread
await addReplyToTicket(ticketId, {
from,
content: text,
inReplyTo: headers['in-reply-to']
});
}
res.status(200).send('OK');
});Frequently Asked Questions
Every inbox can be configured with sender filtering rules. You can whitelist specific domains or email addresses, or use our webhook to implement your own spam filtering logic. Emails that don't match your rules are automatically rejected.
Webhooks are typically delivered within 100-500ms of email receipt. We process emails in real-time with no polling delays. For high-availability applications, we also offer webhook retries with exponential backoff.
Mailhooks is built specifically for inbound email. We offer simpler setup (no DNS changes required for testing), better attachment handling with direct download URLs, and a developer-first API for fetching emails programmatically—perfect for E2E testing.
Yes! You can connect your own domain with simple DNS configuration. We also provide free subdomains on inbox.mailhooks.dev for testing and development.
We automatically retry failed webhooks with exponential backoff for up to 24 hours. You can also use our API to fetch any missed emails. All emails are stored and accessible via the dashboard.
Get Started in 3 Steps
Takes ~2 minutes — no email infrastructure required.
Create a Mailhooks account
Sign up for free in seconds.
Create an inbox
Get a unique email address for your use case.
Add your webhook URL
Point to your endpoint and start receiving emails.