Zapier

The Zapier email transport is part of @betternotify/zapier. It posts the fully rendered email (HTML, subject, addresses, attachments) as JSON to a Zapier Webhooks by Zapier catch hook. Zapier then delivers it through any of its email actions (Gmail, SendGrid, Mailchimp, etc.).

This is useful when you want Zapier to orchestrate email delivery — adding delays, conditionals, CRM updates, or multi-step workflows around each send.

Install

npm install @betternotify/zapier @betternotify/core @betternotify/email

Getting your webhook URL

1. Create a new Zap in zapier.com.
2. Choose Webhooks by Zapier as the trigger.
3. Select Catch Hook as the event.
4. Copy the webhook URL (starts with https://hooks.zapier.com/hooks/catch/...).
5. Send a test from your app — Zapier will pick up the payload and let you map fields to downstream actions.

Store it as an environment variable:

ZAPIER_WEBHOOK_URL=https://hooks.zapier.com/hooks/catch/123456/abcdef

Usage

import { createNotify, createClient } from '@betternotify/core';
import { emailChannel } from '@betternotify/email';
import { zapierTransport } from '@betternotify/zapier';

const email = emailChannel({
  defaults: { from: { name: 'My App', email: 'noreply@example.com' } },
});

const rpc = createNotify({ channels: { email } });
const catalog = rpc.catalog({
  /* routes */
});

const mail = createClient({
  catalog,
  transportsByChannel: {
    email: zapierTransport({
      webhookUrl: process.env.ZAPIER_WEBHOOK_URL!,
    }),
  },
});

Options

Email payload format

The transport posts all email fields as flat, individually-addressable JSON so you can map each one in the Zap editor:

{
  "type": "email",
  "route": "welcome",
  "messageId": "msg_abc123",
  "timestamp": "2026-05-04T12:00:00.000Z",
  "from": { "name": "My App", "email": "noreply@example.com" },
  "to": [{ "name": "Alice", "email": "alice@example.com" }],
  "cc": [],
  "bcc": [],
  "replyTo": null,
  "subject": "Welcome to My App!",
  "html": "<h1>Welcome!</h1>",
  "text": "Welcome!",
  "headers": {},
  "tags": {},
  "attachments": []
}

Addresses are normalized to { name?, email } objects (not RFC 5322 strings) for easy field mapping. Attachments are base64-encoded when present.

Error handling

Limitations

• Zapier catch hooks have a ~10 MB payload limit.
• No delivery receipt — transportMessageId is always undefined since Zapier doesn't provide one.
• Webhook URLs are the credential — if exposed, anyone can trigger your Zap. The transport redacts URLs in error messages and logs.