zohomail-free 0.1.2

Read, send, and reply to Zoho Mail emails on free-tier accounts — no IMAP or POP3 needed

zohomail-free

Built by MelkonTech
Documentation · PyPI · GitHub

Read, send, and reply to Zoho Mail emails from Python or the command line — on a free account.

Zoho locks IMAP/POP3 behind paid plans, so standard email libraries don't work on free accounts. zohomail-free works around this by authenticating via the Zoho web UI and calling their internal API directly — giving you full inbox access and SMTP sending without paying for a plan.

Install

pip install zohomail-free
playwright install chromium

Setup

Create a .env file with your credentials:

ZOHO_EMAIL=[e-mail]
ZOHO_PASSWORD=your_zoho_login_password
ZOHO_APP_PASSWORD=your_app_specific_password   # for sending
ZOHO_REGION=eu   # eu or com

Generate an app-specific password in Zoho Mail → Settings → Security → App Passwords.

Python

import asyncio
from zohomail import ZohoMailClient, send

client = ZohoMailClient(
    email="[e-mail]",
    password="your_password",
    region="eu",
)

# List inbox
emails = asyncio.run(client.list_emails(limit=5))
for e in emails:
    print(e["subject"], "—", e["from"])

# Read a full email
email = asyncio.run(client.read_email(emails[0]["id"]))
print(email["body"])

# Send an email
send(
    from_addr="[e-mail]",
    app_password="your_app_password",
    to="[e-mail]",
    subject="Hello",
    body="Hi there!",
    region="eu",
)

CLI

# List inbox
zohomail list
zohomail list --limit 20 --json

# Read a message (get the id from list output)
zohomail read --id 1782000221530004400

# Send a new email
zohomail send --to [e-mail] --subject "Hello" --body "Hi there"

# Reply to an email (preserves threading)
zohomail reply --id 1782000221530004400 --body "Thanks!"

Self-hosted REST API

Run a local API server over your Zoho account:

# Set API_KEY in your .env, then:
zohomail-api

# Or with Docker
docker build -t zohomail-free .
docker run -p 8000:8000 --env-file .env zohomail-free

Method	Path	Description
GET	/emails	List inbox (?limit=10)
GET	/emails/{id}	Read full email
POST	/emails/send	Send new email
POST	/emails/{id}/reply	Reply to email
GET	/health	Health check

All endpoints require X-API-Key: <your_key> header.

curl -H "X-API-Key: your_key" http://localhost:8000/emails

How it works

Zoho's free plan blocks IMAP/POP3 with ACCESS_RESTRICTED_BY_ZOHOMAIL. However, their web UI talks to an internal JSON API (ml.do / md.do) over HTTPS. This library uses Playwright to authenticate once, saves the session cookie at ~/.zohomail_session.pkl, then makes API calls from within the browser context where cookies are correctly scoped — no paid plan needed.

On subsequent runs the saved session is reused. If it expires, the library re-authenticates automatically.

Documentation

Full docs at melkontech.github.io/zohomail-free

Author

Built by MelkonTech

License

MIT — see LICENSE