I've tried to find out if it's possible to let people without a github account send in issue requests. I've found two services that can create issues from emails, fire.foundersclub.com and zapier.com, but I would like it to also send out an email to the person that raised the issue with updates on that issue.
I haven't found any way to do that yet, and would be very happy if someone could help me with it!
I'm assuming you found your way to create Github issues from an Email input.
For email updates to the user, we would first need to work out what to use as the trigger. There seems to be no Zapier triggers for when an issue is worked on, so I would think that the "Mention" trigger may be your best option. So when you mention a specific Github account on the issue (this would be a manual process), it would send emails to the person who raised the issue.
The problem you have to solve here is where to store the email address that you want to send emails to.
You could either:
1) Store the email address in the issue title.
When the mention trigger starts, use the Zapier formatter to look through the title for the email address, and send details of the issue to that email address.
This does, of course, have security concerns (making the email public), which may or may not affect you depending on what your scenario for the usage is.
2) Store the email address on an online database.
Automatically issue an ID related to that email address, and store the ID in the Github issue title.
When the mention trigger starts, use the Zapier formatter to look through the title for the ID, search through the Database for the relevant ID, find the related email adderss, and send details of the issue to that email address. This issue will solve the security concern.
Possible online databases are services like Kintone or Zoho Creator, or you could utilize Google Sheets if that seems easier.