Documentation

Core Concepts

Inbound Email Processing Lifecycle

Understand how MailHook receives, stores, dispatches, and delivers inbound emails.

1 min readUpdated February 24, 2026Edit this page

MailHook uses a queue-based lifecycle for reliable delivery.

Pipeline stages

Receive

Email routing sends inbound messages to MailHook processing.

Persist

Raw MIME is stored in object storage, and metadata is written to the database.

Dispatch

Message is queued for routing evaluation and integration fan-out.

Deliver

Each matched routing creates deliveries to integrations with retry policy.

Observe

Activity and delivery attempts expose status, duration, HTTP code, and error details.

Why this design matters

  • Decouples receive from destination response time.
  • Supports retries and dead-letter handling.
  • Keeps replay safe and deterministic for debugging.