Email Channels

An email channel lets you handle email conversations alongside your live messaging channels. Every email channel has a single email address that's used for both directions — customers send mail to it, and your agents' replies go out from it. Inbound emails become conversations in the Inbox that your team can reply to just like any other chat.

How it works

1. You create a channel with type Email and pick an email address (e.g. support@hydra-help.com).
2. Customers email that address. Hydra:
   • Finds or creates a contact by the sender's address
   • Creates a new conversation in the channel
   • Appends each subsequent reply to the same conversation (threaded via In-Reply-To / References headers)
3. When an agent replies from the Inbox, Hydra sends a real email through Resend — From: is the channel's email, so the customer hits Reply and the response routes straight back into the same thread.

Creating an email channel

Go to Team → Channels → New channel. Pick Email as the type, give the channel a name, and pick the email address you want customers to use.

The address is auto-suggested from the channel name (e.g. naming the channel "Support" suggests support@hydra-help.com), but you can edit it before creating. The address must end in @hydra-help.com or @reply.hydra-help.com — both are routed through Hydra's Cloudflare email infrastructure already, so no DNS or MX setup is needed on your end.

Each address is globally unique — two channels can't both claim the same one.

Editing an email channel's address

On the channel's detail page, the email address field is editable. Save it and inbound mail starts flowing to the new address immediately. Outbound replies on existing conversations will use the new address from that point forward; threading via Message-ID keeps prior conversations intact even when the address changes.

You can also set:

• From name — how the channel appears to recipients in their inbox (defaults to the channel name)
• Signature — text appended to every outbound reply

Replying to email threads

Open the Inbox and switch to the Email tab. Email conversations show the subject line in the thread header. Type your reply in the composer (with attachments if needed) and click Send email.

The customer's email client keeps your reply in the same thread thanks to the Message-ID, In-Reply-To, and References headers Hydra sets on every outbound message. When the customer replies, it lands back in the same Hydra conversation and reopens it if it had been resolved.

Internal notes work on email channels the same way as messaging — they're visible to agents only and are never emailed out.

Messaging vs Email tabs

The Inbox has two tabs:

• Messaging — widget chats, portal chats, unassigned conversations
• Email — every conversation tied to an email-type channel

The channel filter and status filter within each tab work the same way they always have.

Requirements

• RESEND_API_KEY set in Vercel environment variables — for outbound sending. Required.
• INBOUND_EMAIL_SECRET set in Vercel environment variables — shared between Hydra and the Cloudflare inbound-email worker.
• Cloudflare email-routing on hydra-help.com (catch-all → hydra-inbound-email worker → Hydra /api/email/inbound). Already configured for *@hydra-help.com and *@reply.hydra-help.com.

Without RESEND_API_KEY, outbound replies fail with "Email could not be sent". Inbound intake still works as long as the worker can reach Hydra.

Custom domains (support@yourcompany.com)

Sending and receiving from your own domain (instead of hydra-help.com) is fully supported. Add the domain at Settings → Email Domains, paste the DKIM/SPF records into your DNS provider, then pick the verified domain when creating or editing an email channel. See Custom email domains for the full walkthrough including inbound forwarding.