Nextcloud, Qbittorrent, Truenas and loads of other svcs take optional email credentials for sending alerts and other features (eg. password recovery for nextcloud).
What email providers do people usually use to make this process simple to set up? For example, Microsoft doesn’t allow basic auth anymore so it’s supposedly not possible to use via most of these setups, and some other services seem like they have a low inbox size (does this matter?)
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I use SMTP2GO (with my own domain) with the free plan (1000 email per month) that’s way over a selfhoster needs.
I started running into the same problem about 2 years ago. Found a company called Send in Blue ( which has since been bought and is now called Brevo). They’re a commercial mail sender but have a free tier. How long that will continue to be available, I don’t know, but for now it solves my email sending issues.
I do this with my home network using FastMail. You can create App specific passwords for each service you add email notification support for. This means you don’t risk compromising your full accounts passwords. You can also put constraints on each app password, such as limiting it only to sending emails but not reading email or looking at your contacts and files. This is nice in case any of my passwords are leaked.
Find out if your ISP provides an SMTP smarthost.
Worth noting that in Finland they are also by law required to log metadata of delivered mails.
I use docker-mail-server
FastMail is nice.
or (I don’t recommend it) you could learn to:
I moved to Google workspace for email, yes I know it Google.
I have my home IP and dedi IP in the routing settings, then just use SMTP to Google and let them forward to me.
All servers have null mail installed and setup for Google, I also have docker containers with config if needed
smtp_to_telegram
Similar idea, but a different service if you like gotify: https://github.com/tystuyfzand/gotify-smtp
Self hosted ntfy and mailrise. Mailrise is a wrapper for apprise that let’s you send emails to it and in turn converts the email to the desired push alert.
For password resets or account creation welcome emails I’d use a SMTP service. I use SMTP2GO for those. Free plan is something 1000 emails a month. I’ve been using them for a year and think I’ve sent maybe 5 or 10 emails.
I’m using smtp gotify , been using it for a while now and it seems OK for alerts and outer features
I ended up setting up a postal server on my vps (see here). Their docs are pretty easy to follow through and it’s probably the cheapest option (assuming you already use the and have a domain).
PurelyMail is what I use. It’s been great so far. I’ve been using it for over a year for this exact use case.
Seconded on Purelymail.
They rock.I’m sometimes afraid they will be bought or change terms.
Given it seems to be a single guy doing his thing I don’t expect them to get bought out.
It’s a great service and incredibly cheap. With advanced pricing I’m only paying ~0,40€ per month. My domain + purelymail is less than I’d pay for other providers email only.
Edit: If Amazon increases their prices they’ll have to pass it on, but those should be pretty consistent. If you use your own domain (or an alias service) switching email providers is simple anyway.
You only need SMTP server, so the inbox size doesn’t matter (assuming you have another email where you want to receive those notifications). And even if you have separate inbox for alerts it’s quite unlikely that you get hundreds of megabytes worth of alerts every day and they’re pretty much useless after a day or two so there’s no need to keep them around.
In here ISPs commonly have SMTP service included on their service, so that’s worth checking. Beyond than that, any at least somewhat reputable provider will do as long as they provide traditional SMTP service. One option is to use a relay host on local network which sends mail trough a smart host so you can just use local unauthenticated SMTP server for all the things you run and that one service will then push the messages to the internet.
It’s not really that privacy friendly, but I use zoho. You can send emails free from aliases with your own domain name so I have emails coming from nextcloud@mydomain pve@mydomain etc.
I’ve been pretty lazy with this.
I used to use my hotmail account, but they disabled password auth for smtp and many programs dont support 0auth2.
With that change, I just moved to using gmail. You’ve gotta create an App Password for smtp, but other wise works fine.
I’ve just been too lazy to move out of gmail+hotmail. Maybe one day
