I've built a number of sites/prototypes along these lines, two services (no affiliation beyond using them) that I've found useful are: http://www.postmarkapp.c

I've built a number of sites/prototypes along these lines, two services (no affiliation beyond using them) that I've found useful are: http://www.postmarkapp.com http://www.postmarkapp.com and http://www.mailgun.com http://www.mailgun.com In particular they really are quite good at simplifying the parsing of inbound emails, which lets you get going quickly.