Nylas offers a set of REST-style integration APIs and tools that let you quickly add communications functionality to an application you’re developing. Nylas Connect (the Email, Calendar, and Contacts APIs plus Scheduler), Notetaker, and Agent Accounts all run on the shared infrastructure described in this section. Your project uses these APIs to create, read, update, and delete data from providers like Google and Microsoft.
Diagram as text
- Your application: Calls the Nylas APIs with an API key and the user's grant ID. It sends API requests to Nylas.
- Notifications: When data changes, Nylas notifies your application through webhooks, Google Pub/Sub, or Amazon SNS.
- Nylas (US and EU regions):
- Email, Calendar, and Contacts APIs → Passthrough: Requests go straight to the provider. Nylas doesn't store message or event data. Connects to: Google (Gmail, Google Calendar); Microsoft (Outlook, Microsoft 365); Exchange on-premises (Exchange Web Services).
- Email, Calendar, and Contacts APIs → Synced: Nylas keeps the last 90 days of messages, so requests return quickly. Connects to: IMAP providers (Yahoo, iCloud, and other IMAP servers).
- Notetaker → Joins as a bot: Attends the meeting like a participant. Connects to: Meeting platforms (Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Zoom).
- Agent Accounts → Hosted by Nylas: No third-party provider account needed. Connects to: Any email address (Send and receive email and calendar invitations with anyone.).
- What Nylas handles for you:
- One API for every provider: The same message, event, and contact objects for Gmail, Outlook, IMAP, and the rest.
- Provider protocols: Talks Gmail API, Microsoft Graph, EWS, IMAP, SMTP, CalDAV, and CardDAV for you.
- Token refresh: Refreshes provider tokens, and sends
grant.expiredwhen a user's access is lost. - Change detection: Watches each account and notifies your app when data changes.
How Nylas detects changes in user accounts
Section titled “How Nylas detects changes in user accounts”Nylas watches each connected account for new and changed data, and sends your app a notification when something changes. How Nylas learns about a change depends on the provider, and so does how quickly the notification reaches you:
- Gmail: Google sends change notifications to Nylas through Google Pub/Sub. If your Google Cloud project uses the
gmail.readonlyorgmail.labelsscopes, set up Pub/Sub to get real-time updates. - IMAP providers: Nylas keeps two IMAP
IDLEconnections open for each account, listening for changes to the Inbox and Sent folders. Providers with high latency, or withoutIDLEsupport, delay notifications. See the IMAP provider guide. - Exchange on-premises: Nylas subscribes to Exchange Web Services push notifications.
- iCloud contacts: Nylas polls for changes, so contact notifications arrive after the next poll.
Nylas performance metrics
Section titled “Nylas performance metrics”| Metric | Value | Description |
|---|---|---|
| API Success Rate | 99.9% | The number of requests that return successful HTTP status codes. |
| P90(request_time) | Less than 500 ms | P90 of request_time to various API endpoints. |
| TT50 | 5 min | Average time to sync the first 50 threads during an account’s initial sync. |
| TT500 | 25 min | Average time to sync the first 500 threads during an account’s initial sync. |
Platform uptime SLA guarantees
Section titled “Platform uptime SLA guarantees”For customers who require high availability, Nylas offers uptime guarantees on the Enterprise plan. Contact your Nylas representative for more information.
Business Associate Agreements
Section titled “Business Associate Agreements”Nylas also offers a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) for customers who require them for HIPAA or HITECH compliance. For more details, see the Nylas Security whitepaper.
Static IPs
Section titled “Static IPs”Some email servers in secure environments only accept connections and data from a known list of IP addresses. With static IP routing, Nylas uses only a specific set of static IP addresses when authenticating and connecting your project’s users.
Static IP routing is enabled automatically on all paid Nylas plans (Essentials, Pro, and Enterprise) and is currently available for IMAP and Exchange on-prem servers only. If you’re on the Free plan, you can upgrade from the Billing page in the Nylas Dashboard.