Email API1 min read
Webhooks vs Email for Product Notifications
When to use webhooks, when to notify in-app, when to email, and how to avoid alert fatigue.
Not everything deserves an email. Use API mail for events users must not miss — receipts, security, delivery failures.
Quick summary
- Webhooks — machine to machine: tell another system that something happened so it can act immediately
- In-app notifications — for people already in your product
- Email — for people who are not in your product right now and need to know, or need a record
- Receipts, invoices and failed payments
- Security events: new sign-in, password or email change, new API key
Use each for what it is good at
- Webhooks — machine to machine: tell another system that something happened so it can act immediately
- In-app notifications — for people already in your product
- Email — for people who are not in your product right now and need to know, or need a record
Events that deserve an email
- Receipts, invoices and failed payments
- Security events: new sign-in, password or email change, new API key
- Something the user is waiting on: an export is ready, an order has shipped
- Failures they must fix: a sync broke, a domain stopped verifying
Avoiding alert fatigue
- Batch low-priority events into a daily or weekly digest
- Let users choose which notifications they receive by email
- Never email for events the user just did themselves in the app
- Keep security mail separate from product updates so it is never ignored
Sending the emails
OquMail’s transactional API sends from a mailbox on your domain over HTTPS, and logs every send with its delivery result. Use a separate API key per service or environment, so you can revoke one without affecting the others.