Postmark outbound integration

[ekevu123]

I am trying to set up Postmark for outbound only in Cloudron for e-mails. This is the second domain in the same account if that changes something.

For the API token, I am using the Server API token from Postmark, right? Other than that, I have set up the same settings as for the first domain, but for the second domain, outbound e-mails are not being shown in Postmark under Activities. But they arrive, at least for testing.

I am not sure if this is a problem with Postmark or Cloudron, but I wanted to check here first.

[girish]

@ekevu123 Did you set up a Sender signature for the domain - https://account.postmarkapp.com/signature_domains ? You have to choose "Send from any email address on a domain" and then do the DNS verification.

[ekevu123]

Thank you, that helps!

[crazybrad]

@girish Is it possible to add Sender Signature for domain to the Postmark outbound form integration in Cloudron? In looking at the Postmark API there are endpoints to Create A Signature (https://postmarkapp.com/developer/api/signatures-api#create-signature) which provides DKIM Host, DKIM Text and Return Path) that need to be added as DNS records. Once that happens, there are also endpoints in the Domains API (https://postmarkapp.com/developer/api/domains-api#domains-verify-dkim and https://postmarkapp.com/developer/api/domains-api#domains-verify-return-path) to Verify those DNS entries. When I added my first Cloudron server and domain, I never received the welcome emails. In checking my Postmark activity log, I saw that I forgot to add a Sender Signature. If the Sender Signature was added and verified prior to sending the welcome email in the integration flow, I think it would be a better onboarding experience.

[girish]

@crazybrad currently, we don't do any automation with respect to outbound email relays, it only uses SMTP. I agree though it would be nice to have some automation going and maybe even use API to send emails instead of SMTP (that way we get deliverability reports etc as well).

[crazybrad]

@girish I'm not sure I explained my use case properly. We are using the Smart Host feature and providing the Postmark API key. Cloudron is using SMTP to send the mail, but Postmark fails to send the mail without a proper Sender Signature. In checking further, automation would require entering the account API key (not just the SMTP token), not something that is currently requested in the outbound email relay form. Perhaps a warning message (similar to SPF record) is enough for now. Automation is much more involved. And if you did this for Postmark, you might need to do so for every other provider too(: Since I am new to Cloudron, is entering the DNS records needed (which I did at Porkbun) the proper procedure?

Should I sync DNS after a manual change in DNS records (remember seeing this somewhere else)?

[girish]

Think I understand now - for each provider we have to outline the bunch of steps needed to get it ready to send email.

@crazybrad said in Postmark outbound integration:

Since I am new to Cloudron, is entering the DNS records needed (which I did at Porkbun) the proper procedure?

Cloudron manages the records that are related to apps (and the mail server, if you use it). Other than that, you can add/delete/update records in the DNS directly. You don't usually ever have to manually sync DNS records . What kind of records were you adding into Porkbun?

[crazybrad]

Postmark requires a DKIM TXT record and a CNAME record for the Return-Path (this is mail server related).

[girish]

@crazybrad ah ok, those kind of records you have to add on your own.

[crazybrad]

Got it. So should I sync (since they are email related) or not?

[girish]

@crazybrad By sync, I assume you mean https://docs.cloudron.io/domains/#sync-dns ? If so, that is not needed. The sync button is only syncing records that Cloudron knows about.

"Email related" records was an overly broad term I used. The records that Cloudron sets up specifically are:

• MX record - if incoming email is enabled
• SPF record - the TXT record is upserted with the mail server domain name
• DMARC - a TXT record with the default DMARC policy
• DKIM - a TEXT record with the DKIM key to sign cloudron emails. DNS can have many DKIM keys and this one is specific to Cloudron mail server. It's not related to the Postmark DKIM record.

Apart from the above, it has no clue about other records (including the postmark records)!

[crazybrad]

@girish Thank you for this thorough explanation. Now that I understand the purpose of sync-dns and which DNS records are created by Cloudron, I am thinking that the SPF record created by Cloudron (which I manually edited to include the Postmark mail server) should be "synced". Is this correct?

[girish]

@crazybrad to clarify further, "sync" here just means Cloudron is adding/updating entries in your domain provider. So, if you delete the A record of an app directly in your domain provider, if you click the "sync" button, Cloudron will re-add that A record back. With that in mind, if you deleted or tampered or changed the SPF record in your domain provider, clicking "sync" will bring it back.

[crazybrad]

@girish Nice. Wish Cloudron could fix all the other mistakes I make.