Introduction
What OpenEmail is, why email needs it, and the core concepts: domains, addresses, mailboxes, routes, patterns, and messages.
What is OpenEmail?
OpenEmail helps you build fully functional email applications all via API. Create a real mailbox on your own domain with one API call. Then send, receive, and access your mailbox via API, CLI, or directly through your email client.
Mail relays, SMTP, IMAP, and MIME are all managed under the hood. The same mailbox works for people, agents, and applications.
Why email needs this
Email is one of the last core primitives you can fully own. Until recently, you could send through an API, but the mailbox itself was still rented from Google or Microsoft, or stitched together from separate vendors. That left you with:
- No API to create mailboxes on demand.
- Per-mailbox subscription pricing that prohibits scaling mailboxes.
- Rate and sending limits built for humans, not agents or automations.
What you get with OpenEmail
- Own your email end to end. This is your mailbox, on your domain, all operated over HTTP. Program it however you like. Never rent your mailbox or be forced to work behind a provider's OAuth.
- A real mailbox in one API call. Start receiving in seconds. Nothing to set up.
- Every message is clean JSON. Fetch, read, and send over HTTP, with all the parsing and complexity of traditional relays handled under the hood.
- One mailbox for humans and agents. One source of truth for your app, your users, and your agents.
- Opens in any email client. The mailbox you run via API also opens in the email client of your choice. Access your mailbox however you want, whenever you want.
- No per-mailbox fees. Pay for throughput, not how many mailboxes you have.
Ways to use OpenEmail
- The app at app.open.email. Where you sign up, and where setup lives: domains and their DNS, mailboxes, addresses and routing, sending configuration, and API keys.
- The API. Every operation, over HTTP. The app and the CLI are both clients of it, so anything they do you can do directly.
- Webmail at webmail.open.email. Reading and sending mail in the browser, on your own hostname if you want one. The app administers the platform; webmail is where the mail itself is.
- The CLI. The same API from your terminal or a script, plus an interactive terminal client for looking around.
- Any email client. A mailbox speaks IMAP, SMTP, and JMAP, so the same mailbox opens in Apple Mail, Thunderbird, or your phone.
Where to go next
- Core concepts for the vocabulary: domains, addresses, mailboxes, routes, patterns, and the rest.
- Quickstart to skip ahead and build something.
Own your email. Program all of it.