Is there a third-party service for receiving email and accessing via an API?

Question

I'd like to build a feature into our web app that involves receiving and processing the contents of an email.

But instead of going through the hassle of getting email setup on our server, it'd be really nice if there were a third-party service where I could forward emails and they could then process them and make the contents of the email available via an API.

Flow would go like this:

1. Customer sends email to [email protected]
2. [email protected] forwards to [email protected]
3. some-email-processor.com accepts the email and then stores it.
4. I then make an API every X amount of time to retrieve the new emails

Are there any services like that out there?

Answer 1

The application you are proposing does pretty much what any email client that leaves the content on the server does. Offhand, all you need is a server that allows access by your client using such standard protocols as SMTP.

Answer 2

You can sign yourself or your company up for a mail account with GMail (that's Google) or any other mail provider that gives you SMTP access. Then your application can use that service as its mailbox to the world. It doesn't get much simpler.