DNS questions

[privsec]

If I have an email provider lets say fastmail or mailbox, but I want to use cloudron to host my website, my teams chat, and other items - How would I accomplish this?

[A Former User]

@privsec I'm a little confused by your question. Assuming you already know how to set up a cloudron, wouldn't you just use your external SMTP server in configs instead of the cloudron one?

[privsec]

Thats what I think would be done - right?

I can just set all the MX records and everything for the domain but point the DNS servers to cloudron for a wildcard certificate from lets encrypt, right?

[A Former User]

@privsec https://docs.cloudron.io/email/#smtp-server

[privsec]

So I dont want to have or use cloudrons email service. I like the other providers service much more and they require setting items and records on my domain as well as cloudron does.

Maybe I am just misunderstanding things

[d19dotca]

@privsec said in DNS questions:

So I dont want to have or use cloudrons email service

Correct. There's no requirement to use Cloudron's own mail server, you can use any external server for IMAP & SMTP.

[privsec]

@d19dotca So I can use fastmails email services and cloudrons wildcard cert ?

[d19dotca]

@privsec said in DNS questions:

So I can use fastmails email services and cloudrons wildcard cert ?

The wildcard cert has nothing to do with email and is used for apps you deploy on Cloudron instead.

So what you'd do is have your authoritative DNS settings pointing the MX record to your Fastmail service and setup your mail client using Fastmail's servers. You'd then setup Cloudron to use your DNS provider where it can set its own DNS records for what it needs and it will not touch the existing items there (unless it needs to overwrite one). As long as you keep the email service off (or outbound only) on the Cloudron server, the DNS MX record wont be touched by Cloudron since you're not needing to accept mail on the Cloudron server.

[privsec]

@d19dotca Perfect, this is what I was wanting to clarify. Also, just to ensure, what about the apps that send email about warnings or signups? Does that have a special outbound SMTP setup that wont interfere with fastmail services?

[d19dotca]

@privsec said in DNS questions:

what about the apps that send email about warnings or signups? Does that have a special outbound SMTP setup that wont interfere with fastmail services?

If Fastmail is your provider for all mail-related items, then for apps that may need to send emails outbound, you'd set the email settings for the domain to Outbound Only (which is automatically done when disabling incoming mail server for the domain and setting up an external SMTP connection on the Outbound tab). You'd use the link that @atrilahiji provided earlier, and set up the external SMTP settings to whatever Fastmail provides you for accessing its SMTP servers. Most likely it'd need to be setup the same as your mail client when sending/receiving via Fastmail.

[privsec]

@d19dotca Okay, that is a bit confusing, but I will only be able to figure it out once I try it.

I appreciate everyone's help and responses.