Cloudflare Docs
Cloud Email Security (formerly Area 1)
Cloudflare Docs
Cloud Email Security (formerly Area 1)
Edit this page
Report an issue with this page
Log into the Cloudflare dashboard
Set theme to dark (⇧+D)
  1. Products
  2. Cloud Email Security (formerly Area 1)
  3. Setup
  4. API

API deployment

When you choose an API deployment for your Cloud Email Security (formerly Area 1) setup, email messages only reach Cloud Email Security after they have already reached a user’s inbox.

Then, through on integrations with your email provider, Cloud Email Security can retract messages based on your organization’s policies.

With API deployment, messages travel through Cloud Email Security’s email filter after reaching your users.

​​ Benefits

When you choose API deployment, you get the following benefits:

  • Easy protection for complex email architectures, without requiring any change to mailflow operations.
  • Agentless deployment for Microsoft 365 and Gmail.
  • The initial email protection measures offered by your current email provider.

​​ Limitations

However, API deployment also has the following disadvantages:

  • Cloud Email Security is dependent on your email provider’s API infrastructure and outages will increase the message dwell time in the inbox.
  • Cloud Email Security requires read and write access to mailboxes.
  • Requires API support from your email provider (does not typically support on-premise providers).
  • Your email provider may throttle API requests from Cloud Email Security.
  • Detection rates may be lower if multiple solutions exist.
  • Messages cannot be modified or quarantined.
  • Certain URL rewrite schemes cannot be decoded (for example, Mimecast).

​​ Get started

For help getting started, refer to our setup guides.