Email

NodePress sends email through any SMTP server: your provider’s, a transactional service such as Resend, Postmark, Mailgun or SendGrid, or Gmail for testing. Set it up with environment variables or in the admin under Settings → Email & storage. Without it, NodePress still runs, but sends nothing.

What NodePress sends

Email	When	Link valid for
Password reset	Someone uses “forgot password” on the login page	15 minutes
Invitation	An admin adds a user, or resends the invitation	7 days
Form notification	A form with an email action gets a submission. See Forms.
Test email	An admin clicks Send test

Reset and invitation links point at SITE_URL, so set it to the admin panel’s public URL. Form notifications use the name, logo and color from Settings → Brand.

Set it up in the admin

Admins open Settings → Email & storage and fill in the Email card:

Field	Meaning
Send emails	Turns email on or off.
SMTP server	Host name, such as `smtp.resend.com`.
Port	Usually `587`, or `465` for SSL.
Security	STARTTLS (587) or SSL/TLS (465).
Username, Password	SMTP credentials. A saved password is never shown again; leave the field blank to keep it.
From address	The sender, such as `Acme <noreply@acme.com>`.

Saved settings are used at once, with no restart. Send test sends a short message to the address in Send a test to, using the values in the form even before you save them. The setup wizard offers the same form as its second step.

The Email card with SMTP server, port, security, login, from address and Send test

The password is stored encrypted, with a key derived from SETTINGS_SECRET (or JWT_SECRET when that isn’t set). If that secret changes, re-enter the password.

Set it up with environment variables

SMTP_HOST=smtp.example.com
SMTP_PORT=587
SMTP_SECURE=false            # true for port 465 (SSL), false for 587 (STARTTLS)
SMTP_USER=apikey
SMTP_PASS=...
SMTP_FROM="Acme <noreply@example.com>"

Variable	Default	Meaning
`SMTP_HOST`	none	SMTP server. Setting it turns email on.
`SMTP_PORT`	`587`	Port.
`SMTP_SECURE`	`false`	`true` for implicit TLS (port 465), `false` for STARTTLS.
`SMTP_USER`, `SMTP_PASS`	none	Credentials. Leave them out for a server without authentication.
`SMTP_FROM`	see below	Sender address.

When SMTP_HOST is set, the environment wins: the admin’s Email card shows the settings read-only (without the password) and can only send a test.

The backend checks the SMTP connection at startup and logs a warning if it fails, but keeps running.

The sender address

Without a From address or SMTP_FROM, emails come from NodePress <username> when the username is an email address, or noreply@<SMTP host> otherwise. Most providers only accept a sender on a domain you’ve verified with them, so set one.

Gmail

Gmail is fine for testing (it caps sending at a few hundred messages a day). It doesn’t accept your normal password: turn on 2-Step Verification for the account, create an App Password, and use the 16 characters without spaces as the password.

SMTP_HOST=smtp.gmail.com
SMTP_PORT=587
SMTP_SECURE=false
SMTP_USER=you@gmail.com
SMTP_PASS=<16-character app password>

Without email

	Development	Production
Password reset	The reset link is shown on screen	Nothing is sent. The link is only written to the backend’s log.
Invitation	The admin gets the link to copy	The admin gets the link to copy
Form notifications	Skipped	Skipped

Set up email before you go live, or nobody can reset a forgotten password. An admin can still invite users and send them their link by hand. See Users and roles.

Delivery and retries

Password resets and invitations are sent in the background, so a slow SMTP server never holds up the request. Form notifications are queued as background jobs: a failed send is retried after 1 minute and again after 10 minutes, and admins can see failed jobs on the Jobs page.