Notify
Sign in

How to Use Notify with Express

Send email from an Express.js route with fetch and x-api-key.

Send transactional email from Express using Node’s built-in fetch (Node 18+). Keep your API key on the server — never expose it to the browser.

Prerequisites

Install and configure

npm install express

Store the key in your environment:

NOTIFY_API_KEY=your_api_key_here

Send an email from a route

import express from 'express';

const app = express();
app.use(express.json());

app.post('/api/send-welcome', async (req, res) => {
  const { to, name } = req.body;

  if (!to) {
    return res.status(400).json({ error: 'to is required' });
  }

  try {
    const response = await fetch('https://notify.cx/api/email/send', {
      method: 'POST',
      headers: {
        'Content-Type': 'application/json',
        'x-api-key': process.env.NOTIFY_API_KEY
      },
      body: JSON.stringify({
        to,
        subject: 'Welcome aboard',
        message: `<h1>Hi ${name || 'there'}!</h1><p>Thanks for signing up.</p>`
      })
    });

    const data = await response.json();

    if (!response.ok) {
      return res.status(response.status).json(data);
    }

    return res.json(data);
  } catch (error) {
    console.error(error);
    return res.status(500).json({ error: 'Failed to send email' });
  }
});

app.listen(3000);

Successful response from Notify:

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "messageId": "01000194b1dd1c04-b51e7343-6808-4a68-b2af-845feae57f8b-000000"
  }
}

The message field accepts plain text or HTML. See Sending Emails.

Helper you can reuse

export async function sendNotifyEmail({ to, subject, message, from }) {
  const response = await fetch('https://notify.cx/api/email/send', {
    method: 'POST',
    headers: {
      'Content-Type': 'application/json',
      'x-api-key': process.env.NOTIFY_API_KEY
    },
    body: JSON.stringify({ to, subject, message, ...(from ? { from } : {}) })
  });

  const data = await response.json();
  if (!response.ok) {
    const err = new Error(data.error || 'Notify send failed');
    err.status = response.status;
    err.data = data;
    throw err;
  }
  return data;
}

Where to next?