"Email" Docs offer little help

[yakkomajuri]

Our SMTP Credentials page doesn't really tell me much.

Additional Context: User feedback

[paolodamico]

Let me know if you need help with this

[mariusandra]

I suggest adding a chapter on how to get this working with:

• Mailgun (5000 emails/month free)
• Sendgrid (100 emails/day free)
• Amazon SES (very cheap volume pricing $0.10/1000 mails, more complicated to set up)

[yakkomajuri]

@paolodamico Would definitely want some help with this since I haven't done this setup before.

[yakkomajuri]

@eikooc

[paolodamico]

👍 I'll work on it next week if possible and if not just after the offsite.

[yakkomajuri]

Yeah, definitely not a priority. Cheers!

[yakkomajuri]

Following up on this @paolodamico since we're now adding more features that use emails

[Twixes]

Yep, going to be really useful for emailed invites (PostHog/posthog#2112).

[timgl]

Maybe we should just create an API server that sends transactional emails if people don't have an SMTP server set up?

Or, alternatively, why don't we just use local 'sendmail' or postfix on *nix systems like gitlab does (and include it in Docker image). It may end up in spam occasionally but better than nothing.

[paolodamico]

Yup I think that can work, regardless I'll finish this guide on Mon/Tue so we can get as much self-hosted users as possible to set up SMTP in a reliable/scalable way and we don't need to rely on sendmail.

[yakkomajuri]

@timgl I think that's a good idea

Adds to the idea of a product that "just works" with as little setup as possible (but still allowing customization)

[paolodamico]

Working on this today, @timgl wondering about any negative implications of defaulting to sendmail, wouldn't we be risking email providers / spam lists blacklisting the customer's IP address ?

[timgl]

it would only be the ip of the box that's hosting PostHog, and they're only sending emails to their own boxes. GitLab does it too so I think this makes sense