User to user messaging, reply to email to respond (inbound parse)

Questions
1

Hi Folks,

I am building a messaging app for my users with email and sms notifications. Between my own knowledge and other posts on the forum, I think I can build this.

But I would love it if a user could reply directly to the email or sms notification to respond to a message (so they don’t have to open the web app / log in). Any suggestions on how to go about this? Thanks in advance!

2

Check out Mailgun’s API. It can handle inbound emails and reroute them to your app.

https://documentation.mailgun.com/user_manual.html#receiving-forwarding-and-storing-messages

3

Thanks. It looks like sendgrid also has inbound parse: https://sendgrid.com/docs/Classroom/Basics/Inbound_Parse_Webhook/setting_up_the_inbound_parse_webhook.html

And Twilio has similar functionality https://www.twilio.com/docs/api/twiml

Have you or someone you know implemented this? I’m trying to get a sense of how much work this is and any gotchas before I dive in.

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4

Check out context.io for handling email, its the most extensive email API I’ve come across and its free!

Build awesome things with email

Context.IO takes the pain out of syncing email data with your app so you can focus on what makes your product great.

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5

I used Mailgun’s inbound messages for an iOS app I made about two years ago and didn’t have any issues. As long as you aren’t doing anything too complicated with the response email, it should be straightforward. I presume SendGrid and Twilio (which I’ve also used) are very similar, but I can’t comment on which to choose. Keep in mind, I’m also a lower-level software developer and do this on a regular basis. So your experience may vary.

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6

Thanks for the suggestion!

7

@rushabh did you manage to get this right? if so, I may have a couple questions. Thanks.

8

No I havent tried it yet but I did look into it a little bit. Since I’m already using sendgrid to send out emails, I’ll probably use their email parsing service: https://sendgrid.com/docs/Classroom/Basics/Inbound_Parse_Webhook/setting_up_the_inbound_parse_webhook.html

So you should be able to set up an API workflow in your app, expose it to the web and then use the sendgrid webhook to get the data from inbound emails.

I think exception handling is where it could get complicated (making sure the user is authorized to post, letting the user know if there is an error so they try again etc).

Please let me know if you are able to successfully implement this.

9

Thanks, I need to look closer at this. Appricate your reply.

10

Has anyone implemented any of these solutions? Any lessons learned or gotchas that other’s should be aware of?

11

Hi - Curious if you got the sendgrid inbound parse setup. I see the payload is multi-part form. If you got it working, I’d be curious to hear if you’d recommend POSTing this back to bubble and having bubble handle the formatting and forwarding OR if you’d recommend handling this outside of bubble with sendgrids custom code libraries.

12

Has anyone had any luck with this?

13

Following this as well. Would love to know if anyone has made it work.

14

@maryfox20. Yes, I was able to implement this with Sendgrid Inbound Sparse. I followed @fayewatson instructions per the following link:

Hope this helps! :slight_smile:

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