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We level the playing field

Every email provider has different capabilities. We normalize them so your app never has to care.

Unified Folders

Gmail uses labels. Outlook uses folders. Exchange uses categories. We normalize all of them into a single, predictable folder model your app can rely on.

Universal Search

Full-text search that works identically across Gmail’s API, Microsoft Graph, and raw IMAP SEARCH commands. One query syntax. Every provider.

Smart Webhooks

Real-time event delivery regardless of provider latency. We poll the slow ones so you don’t have to. Every event arrives through one consistent webhook contract.

Replace 45 lines of provider logic with one POST request

Side-by-side: what it takes to send an email through Gmail’s API manually versus through our unified endpoint.

Manual— Gmail API Send
send-email-manual.js - -45 lines 
//--- PROVIDER 1: GMAIL (Google SDK) ---
const { google } = require("googleapis");
const oauth2 = new google.auth.OAuth2( 
 CLIENT_ID, CLIENT_SECRET, REDIRECT_URI 
); 
oauth2.setCredentials({ refresh_token: REFRESH_TOKEN });  

// Manual Base64URL encoding (Gmail-specific requirement)
const encoded = Buffer.from(rawMessage).toString("base64") 
 .replace(/\+/g, "-").replace(/\//g, "_").replace(/=+$/, "");

const gmail = google.gmail({ version: "v1", auth: oauth2 }); await gmail.users.messages.send({ userId: "me", requestBody: { raw: encoded } });

// --- PROVIDER 2: MICROSOFT (Graph SDK) ---
// Note: Requires different Auth flow (Tenant IDs) and SDK
const { Client } = require("@microsoft/microsoft-graph-client"); 
const client = Client.init({ authProvider: (done) => done(null, MS_TOKEN) });

// Microsoft uses a nested JSON object structure, not RFC 2822 raw strings
const draft = {
 message: { 
   subject: "Q4 Sync", 
   body: { content
   Type: "HTML", content: "Let's sync." }, toRecipients: [{ emailAddress: { address: "[email protected]" } }] } };

// 5. Parse response, handle errors, map to schema...
With Us — Same result, any provider
send-email.js 
// 1. Connect once. Works for Gmail, Outlook, and 100+ others.

const nylas = new Nylas({ apiKey: NYLAS_API_KEY });  

// 2. Send. No manual encoding or MIME headers required.
const sentMessage = await nylas.messages.send({ 
identifier: USER_GRANT_ID, 
requestBody: { 
to: [{ email: "[email protected]" }], 
subject: "Q4 Sync", 
body: "Let's sync on Q4 numbers.",
 }, 
});




//
87% LESS CODE
0 PROVIDER SPECIFIC BRANCHES
5 min TO FIRST SEND
Intelligence built-in

Real-time webhooks with retry logic baked in.

Subscribe to granular events—message.created, message.updated, grant.created—and receive payloads within milliseconds. Whether the source is Google, Outlook, or a generic IMAP provider, our infrastructure eliminates polling and cron jobs forever.

Automatic Retries

At-least-once delivery with exponential backoff. If your endpoint fails, Nylas retries twice more (three attempts total) within ~20 minutes, then flags the endpoint in your dashboard.

Signature Verification

Every payload is signed with HMAC-SHA256. Verify authenticity with one line of middleware.

Latency Target

Sub-second delivery for most providers. Nylas normalizes polling-based and push-based providers into one consistent webhook contract — so your app doesn’t care which provider is slower.

Event Filtering

Subscribe only to what you need. Filter by provider, grant, or event type at the subscription level.

JSON 
 {
  "webhook": {
    "id": "wh_abc123",
    "trigger_types": [
      "message.created",
      "message.updated",
      "grant.created"
    ],
    "notification_url": "https://app.acme.com/webhooks/nylas",
    "filters": {
      "grant_id": "grant_8xk2m",
      "provider": "google"
    }
  },
  "delivery": {
    "attempt": 1,
    "max_retries": 3,
    "backoff": "exponential",
    "timeout_ms": 20000,
    "signature_header": "X-Nylas-Signature",
    "hash": "HMAC-SHA256"
  },
  "payload": {
    "id": "evt_9f3a7c",
    "type": "message.created",
    "grant_id": "grant_8xk2m",
    "object": "message",
    "data": {
      "id": "msg_7v2x4q",
      "subject": "Q3 Platform Review",
      "from": [
        { "name": "Dana Lin", "email": "[email protected]" }
      ],
      "received_at": 1718902431
    },
    "delivered_in_ms": 84
  }
}
Connectivity

One Integration. Every Major Provider + Any IMAP Server.

Every provider below returns the same JSON schema for messages, threads, contacts, and calendar events. No provider-specific code paths in your app.

AOL Mail
Microsoft Exchange
Microsoft Outlook
iCloud
Cox Communications
GMX
AOL
IMAP
Gmail
Microsoft Graph
AT&T
Optimum Altice
Zimbra
Orange
Yahoo
Microsoft 365
GMX
Virgilio
T-Mobile
Xfinity
Zoho Mail
Apple
Comcast
Charter Spectrum

Explore our Connectivity Directory to view supported protocols, from modern Graph APIs to legacy IMAP and Exchange.

Explore Integrations

Every Email Workflow, One API

Switch between complex email patterns by changing a single parameter in your request. Our infrastructure handles the provider-specific logic.

Inbound Processing (Webhooks)

Turn your inbox into an event stream. Receive structured JSON payloads for every new message, update, or thread—even from generic IMAP providers.

trigger: 'message.created'

Dynamic Templates

Programmatically manage and inject data into reusable HTML layouts. Support for Handlebars-style variables allows for deep personalization at scale.

template_id: 'welcome_flow_v2'

Clean Messages (Parsing)

Use AI to extract clean, display-ready HTML from raw email content — intelligently handling signatures, threads, and formatting.

GET /v3/grants/{id}/messages/{id}?select=body

Message Tracking & Bounce Detection

Track opens, clicks, and bounces natively. Detect hard and soft bounces automatically to protect sender reputation.

tracking_options: { bounces: true }

Scheduled Send

Schedule emails to send at the perfect time, automatically delivering transactional email on your timeline.

scheduled_at: '2025-06-01T09:00:00Z'

Intelligent Threading

Eliminate the complexity of message reconciliation. We automatically group related messages into unified threads across Gmail, Outlook, and IMAP.

endpoint: '/threads'
Reliability & security

Enterprise-grade by default

Infrastructure that doesn’t page you at 3 AM. Security that passes your customer’s audits.

99.99% API success rate
SOC 2 Type II Certified
34.5B API Transactions daily
HIPAA Compliant
HIPAA HITECH Compliant
ISO 27001 Certified
AICPA SOC 2
GDPR Compliant
CCPA Compliant

The email API powering top-tier applications

250,000+ developers trust Nylas to power email experiences their customers love.

Two developers integrated all three Nylas APIs in 22 days — turning LionDesk into the #1 real estate CRM

22 days to launch
$1.8M in dev costs saved
“We don’t want to build our own stuff to support all the different versions of Microsoft. Just leave it to the experts.”
Lee Ling Yang
Lee Ling Yang Director of Product, LionDesk
Read the Full Story

Funnel grew ARR 150% with Nylas email and calendar

150% ARR increase
“Nylas accelerated our timelines for moving forward because they provided a clear solution to meet our challenges. We were able to springboard out of the vision stage and dive into the execution sprint.”
Ben Rubin
Ben Rubin CPO, Funnel
Read the Full Story

Jobylon grew ARR 25% by adding native email and calendar in under a month

25% YoY ARR growth
10% / 30% new acquisition / expansion
“Nylas can do the heavy lifting of integrating with proprietary APIs, allowing us to work with a simple, standardized API.”
Niklas A. Emanuelsson
Niklas A. Emanuelsson Head of Engineering, Jobylon
Read the Full Story

Frequently asked questions

Need more help? Let’s Talk!

The Nylas Email API lets you send, receive, read, and manage emails from your application using your users' existing inboxes. Teams use it to build CRMs, support tools, workflow automation, and AI-powered email features — without managing provider-specific email infrastructure.

The Nylas Email API supports Gmail, Microsoft Outlook and Exchange, and IMAP-based inboxes. You integrate once and connect to most business and consumer email accounts through a single API.

Transactional email services like SendGrid are built for high-volume outbound sending from your own domain. The Nylas Email API is built for reading, syncing, and sending through your users' existing inboxes — the foundation for CRMs, support tools, and email-native products.

Building directly on provider APIs means maintaining separate integrations for each provider, adapting to ongoing OAuth changes, and handling provider-specific edge cases independently. The Nylas Email API provides a unified abstraction layer across Gmail, Outlook, and IMAP — reducing initial development time and ongoing maintenance significantly.

Yes. CRM email integration is one of the most common use cases for the Nylas Email API. You can sync message threads, read and send from user inboxes, track conversation history, and route email activity into CRM records — all through a single API.

Yes. You can send emails through authenticated user inboxes for workflows like replies, follow-ups, and notifications. Messages are sent through the user's provider and appear in their Sent folder.

Yes. The Nylas Email API supports inbox views, message threads, search, attachments, folder and label sync, and reply workflows — everything needed for a full email client experience.

Yes. The API syncs messages, threads, folders, attachments, and metadata, keeping your application aligned with the user's mailbox across supported providers.

Yes. The Nylas Email API supports message analytics including open tracking, click tracking, reply detection, and bounce detection, depending on provider capabilities. Delivery status and message state can also be monitored through API responses and webhook events.

Users authenticate through secure OAuth flows for supported providers. For some IMAP connections, credentials may be required depending on the provider and security configuration.

The Nylas Email API returns structured error responses and supports webhooks for event-based handling, making it straightforward to detect failed sends, retries, or provider-level issues and respond programmatically.

Nylas provides security controls and data handling features that support GDPR-compliant implementations. Compliance ultimately depends on how your application collects, processes, stores, and retains user data.

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