The first trust question to ask

Any routing layer should invite a simple question: where does my mail actually live? If a third party sits in the path, does it become the archive of record for my conversations?

With OhRelay, the answer is no. OhRelay is a routing layer, not a mailbox system. Your mail lives in your own inbox account.

Inbound mail routes through the system

When a customer writes to one of your managed addresses, OhRelay reads the recipient metadata needed to decide where that message should go. The message is then delivered to your working inbox.

OhRelay does not need to build its own archive of your conversations to do that job. The inbox that stores and indexes the message is still your Gmail, Outlook, or Apple Mail account.

  • Routing decisions use metadata, not message-body analysis
  • Mail is delivered to your own inbox account
  • Your provider remains the system of record for inbox history

Outbound replies use OhRelay only to restore the sender

When you reply, OhRelay's role is to restore the correct customer-facing sender identity for that conversation. That sending step passes through OhRelay briefly so the right address can be applied.

But the sent copy still belongs in your own sent folder. Your reply history remains in the account you already use, not locked inside a separate dashboard.

  • OhRelay restores the correct sender address on replies
  • Sent copies remain in your own sent folder
  • Reply history stays searchable in your existing inbox account

Why that architecture matters

This design is not a limitation. It is part of the product's trust model. Your communication history stays portable, familiar, and under your control.

It also means the privacy boundary is structural. OhRelay does not need to store the body of your mail in order to route it.

What OhRelay does store

OhRelay stores the configuration it needs to route mail correctly: connected domains, managed addresses, destination inbox mappings, and related account settings.

That is operational metadata, not the archive of your conversations. If you stop using OhRelay, your message history remains in the inbox account where it has always lived.