A Question About Domains, Subdomains, Email, and DNS

[jordanurbs]

I'm having trouble understanding how to keep my current services separated and still use Cloudron.

Let's say I use ProtonMail for my domain's email. I host a landing page on the apex domain with Netlify (or DigitalOcean). And nowI want to host apps on subdomains with Cloudron on a completely different instance.

I'm starting to think this is not possible... or at least most of it? Could someone please point me int he right direction?

[girish]

@jordanurbs Sure, that's not a problem at all.

When you add a domain say domain.com, all you are doing is giving Cloudron information on how to add/remove subdomains. At the point when you add a domain, it does the following:

• Adjust the existing SPF record to allow the Cloudron server to send email on behalf of the domain. So, it will add a:my.dashboarddomain.com into the existing SPF record.
• Add a DKIM key to the DNS (for email signing). This key is unique as well and won't affect your existing DNS records.

Then, when you install an app into say app.domain.com, it will add an entry in the DNS to make app subdomain point to your Cloudron server. The rest of the DNS is in tact. So, your app on apex domain or your email services on proton mail are completely unaffected.

Finally, only when you enable incoming mail for the domain in the Email view, Cloudron will add the MX and DMARC records.

If you by mistake try to install an app into a subdomain that is already in use in your DNS (say you install into apex domain), then Cloudron will give a warning saying that something is already there and give you a choice whether to overwrite it or not.

You can safely add the same domain in multiple Cloudron installations. As you can see above, the DNS records don't affect each other.

Does that help?

[jordanurbs]

@girish thanks for your detailed response. I resolved the mail issue, it looks like I was confusing outbound versus inbound

For subdomains, it looks like my issue is with the DNS provider. Some apparently don't allow the * symbol for a wildcard domain (this one in particular is Wix), in particular when the apex domain points to a different IP.

[girish]

@jordanurbs said in A Question About Domains, Subdomains, Email, and DNS:

. Some apparently don't allow the * symbol for a wildcard domain

You can also use the manual dns provider. With that, you just have to add the DNS entry manually before you install an app. The UI will remind you to add a DNS entry.

[jordanurbs]

@girish Opening this topic again because years later I'm stumped and asking myself the same question.

Let's say I'm using ProtonMail for all addresses@domain.com except for support@domain.com, which I want to use with FreeScout.

In this case, how would I fetch emails in FreeScout for support@domain.com?

Note that I had to remove Cloudron's DNS records in order to fully verify the domain on Cloudron. I am assuming that if I try to allow inbound emails again via Cloudron, it will disrupt the existing Protonmail set-up.

Tips?

[girish]

@jordanurbs said in A Question About Domains, Subdomains, Email, and DNS:

In this case, how would I fetch emails in FreeScout for support@domain.com?

You would just configure IMAP fetching inside FreeScout (i.e with protonmail credentials), that's about it.

Cloudron Email should not be enabled for that domain. As you guessed, this will disrupt the protonmail setup.

[jordanurbs]

@girish Ah yes that's right. Thanks.

The problem: Protonmail uses their software Proton Bridge for IMAP connections for local mail software (Mail, Thunderbird, etc), it doesn't look like they have any public IMAP server.

An example tutorial, where you see that the server is "127.0.0.1" after setting up Proton Bridge.

This leads me to believe that Protonmail isn't compatible... Has anyone else around here tried to do this or looked into it?

I know with Mailgun it's recommended I make a subdomain for the outgoing email (i.e. mg.domain.com), is that a possibility to do inside Cloudron for incoming emails?

[girish]

@jordanurbs correct, freescout can only work with IMAP. Maybe Protonmail has an API to get emails and freescout has to implement that API. But this is quite a big ask for them, I would imagine.

[girish]

@jordanurbs said in A Question About Domains, Subdomains, Email, and DNS:

I know with Mailgun it's recommended I make a subdomain for the outgoing email (i.e. mg.domain.com), is that a possibility to do inside Cloudron for incoming emails?

As in, you want to setup freescout for say support@subdomain.domain.com ? This is possible.

• Go to Domains view and add subdomain.domain.com
• Then, go to Email view and you can enable email server for subdomain.domain.com. Be careful, not to enable for domain.com since as we discussed this will conflict with protonmail.
• Create some mailboxes and set them up inside Freescout.

[jordanurbs]

@girish Awesome! Didn't realize I could add subdomains to Cloudron.

Thanks for your guidance.