Cloudron Forum

Well, I've just configured SMTP2Go in my Cloudron. I've got 2 domains managed by my Cloudron. So far test emails seem to have worked, so hoping it'll work going forward.

Thank you everyone for your input!

@josephcosta Thank for you more details. Makes sense if emails are used for customer communication and marketing. My needs are purely personal.

Actually I've discovered Cloudron back in 2018 or 2019, as a self-hosted alternative to Google Apps - so self-hosted email had been my #1 goal and still is very high on my list.

@lucidfox Thank you for the link - I'll check it out in more detail for sure. I presume none of these providers add anything to the emails (eg. footers, ads, html tags, etc)?

@josephcosta Thank you! I was actually looking at SMTP2Go and was about to open an account with them as they have a free plan which will be totally sufficient for my personal needs.

As far as Postal. What's your use case for it? Since it's a standalone self-hosted platform that needs to run on a server, how is it different from using Cloudron's built-in SMTP server?

@ccfu Well, I don't pay for that hosting, so that's the main reason. I wouldn't be on Azure otherwise - way too expensive for personal Cloudron instance. Last time I've looked for a 2 cores / 8 GB RAM / 100 GB disk it wasn't that cheap anywhere reliable - like $30+ / month.

Never heard about "transactional" emails before, but reading up a little on that now it seems that all these providers have TOS mostly for marketing campaigns plus the "transactional" emails, which are automated emails in response to some actions or stages in a customer initiated transaction with a business.

So, does using these services for "interpersonal emails" violate their TOS?

Also found this on reddit:

Keep in mind that "transactional mail" is very different from "interpersonal" mail and you need different providers for that. MailGun, SendGrid, Mandrill etc. are designed for transactional mail. They provide insight and analytics into the messages sent by doing things like intercepting clicked links, injecting tracking pixels etc. They can inject features like "unsubscribe" links into the messages. They can do things like scheduled campaigns with automated name insertion. They can detect bouncebacks and rejections from mailservers and keep track of blacklists of people or servers who shouldn't receive emails. This is good for automated messages, notification emails, newsletters, marketing campaigns etc.

These features aren't appropriate for "interpersonal" mail, and in particular you don't want to have things happen like "mail bounces for one user that one time and now it's on the automatic blacklist, and nobody in the organization can send mail to that domain anymore".

For interpersonal mail, you need an anti-spam gateway that also handles relaying outbound mail for you. E.g. Office 365's "Exchange online protection" service, Barracuda, Proofpoint, Mimecast, etc.

@ccfu Thank you for the suggestion. Sigh, it seems there are no free providers for personal email sending anymore - Postmark is $15/mo ;(

@sixguns Thank you for mentioning that provider. Why are you paying for it - it seems they offer a "free" plan? It that to remove their "branding" (I'm guessing here, but that's the only reason I can see based on their plans comparison).

I also presume you've configured it via "External SMTP Server" option in Cloudron?

For few years I've been hosting my Cloudron on Azure. I've been using SendGrid (with their free plan) to send me emails, and everything worked fine. Recently I got a notification from SendGrid saying that they discontinue free plans, so I'm trying to understand what my options for email sending are.

I would appreciate any advice from the community here. If possible I'd prefer something with as little tracking / snooping as possible, but then again, not sure if this is relevant any longer in our times.

I don't think I can use the built-in Cloudron email server to send emails when hosting in Azure. Well, I think technically it is allowed, but there are limitations and potential issues afaik. Cloudron doesn't support Azure Communication Services for email relay - at least I don't see it in the list of available outbound relays.

Thank you all in advance!

@necrevistonnezr Completely agree with you. Boggles my mind. I too think features like 2FA and Captcha should be built-in.

@jdaviescoates Yep, essentially I do the following (I've added 5-6 plugins, not sure why they are not added by default by Cloudron devs):

1. Open terminal for RoundCube
2. git clone ....
3. chown -R www-data:www-data PLUGIN_DIR_NAME
4. Open File Manager for RoundCube
5. Edit "customconfig.php" and add the plugin in there similar to:
   array_push($config['plugins'], 'twofactor_gauthenticator');

@necrevistonnezr Thank you for your advice! Wouldn't think about ownership change, but will keep in mind from now on.

One "good" thing about RoundCube plugins is that they are not updated, it seems, ever So, may not need to update those plugins ever, haha.

Wasn't aware git was available in the terminal for each application. Once I cloned the repo directly into RoundCube filesystem and then followed the instructions, everything was easy and simple.

Hi everyone,

In this day and age I feel uneasy not having 2FA on my apps. I realize this could be more of a "feel good" rather than real security measure (the app being protected should be secure in general, not just the login experience).

I've just switched from Rainloop after being ignorant and learning that it's no longer being maintained.

2FA is implemented as a plug-in for Rounbcube. The plugin I see mentioned the most is https://github.com/alexandregz/twofactor_gauthenticator . The instructions on https://docs.cloudron.io/apps/roundcube/ (Plugin section) says I need a tar archive which needs to be extracted into "/app/data/plugins" directory. I cannot find tar for that 2FA plugin anywhere.

I've never done PHP, so not sure if copying the whole repo content advisable, secure, etc.

Would appreciate if anyone shares their experience or advice on this subject.

Thanks!

@joseph said in Filters after migration from Rainloop:

I moved from Snappy to Roundcube though

Have you setup 2FA for Roundcube? And if you have, which plugin and where did you get the tarball (I'm basing this on Cloudron doc about Roundcube - https://docs.cloudron.io/apps/roundcube/)? I cannot find a tar for https://github.com/alexandregz/twofactor_gauthenticator

@jdaviescoates Wasn't sure if I could get to the source of those filters, as in Rainloop I was using UI controls to define them. But it seems there is a way to get those via SnappyMail. Shall see.

So, I've started disabling/enabling NextCloud apps in the cloud. After I disabled "Antivirus for files" app, Notes sync started working. Completely random thought...

@joseph said in Nextcloud Notes no longer synchronizes:

One angle I did not consider is the android variant and various mobile OS . I am on stock Android and use Google Play Store and use a fairly old motorola

I'm on very close to "stock" Android too. GrapheneOS isn't a big deviation.

Don't think this has anything to do with Android though. Something with authentication.

So, I've looked at Notes app description in NextCloud, where there is this sentence:

Furthermore, a separate REST API allows for an easy integration into third-party apps (currently, there are notes apps for Android, iOS and the console which allow convenient access to your Nextcloud notes).

Then looked at NextCloud Notes app documentation on GitHub. Specifically looked at "Authentication" section here: https://github.com/nextcloud/notes/blob/main/docs/api/README.md#authentication .

If I'm not blind and not crazy it looks like the API does basic authentication and does not support any token based authentication. If that is correct - then W.T.F.!?!

But then I don't understand why Notes integrates with NC client app. The whole point there would be for NC client app to deal with authentication and Notes app just using NC app as comms channel.

@jdaviescoates Agreed. To me SnappyMail has more errors than Rainloop had (never had a single issue with Rainloop).

However it seems one of the problems with RoundCube is that there is no 2FA built in and it seems 2FA plugin has issues (few reports I've seen online). Plus my hope was that Snappy would work fine with Rainloop filters, but not sure if RC will keep applying Rainloop based filters. And I have a lot of those, so would have to manually re-type them all. Sigh.