# Setting Up Emails

> How to setup emails in your Makerkit SaaS application

*Canonical: https://makerkit.dev/docs/next-supabase-lite/how-to/setup/set-up-emails*

---

Sending emails is a critical part of your SaaS application. Makerkit uses emails to send invites to your users only, but it's likely you'll want to send other emails to your users.

To set up emails in your Makerkit application, you should add the following environment variables to your project, using a secure environment:

```bash
EMAIL_HOST=
EMAIL_PORT=587
EMAIL_USER=
EMAIL_PASSWORD=
EMAIL_SENDER='MakerKit Team <info@makerkit.dev>'
```

Makerkit will use these values to send emails on your behalf using the node library `nodemailer`.

NB: this does not refer to emails sent by Supabase. These have to be setup
from within the Supabase Dashboard. You can reuse the same SMTP settings.

### Where do I get these values?

These values are normally provided by your service provider.

### Which services are supported?

Any service that supports SMTP should work. We recommend using [Resend](https://resend.com/).

### How do I test emails locally?

Makerkit uses [InBucket](https://inbucket.org) - a platform to testing emails.

InBucket saves time during development since we can test
our emails without setting up a real SMTP service - and works locally and
offline.

InBucket will run automatically when starting the local Supabase environment.

InBucket will now be running at [localhost:54324](http://localhost:54324). When we send an email using the
`sendEmail` function in the kit, we can visualize it using the InBucket UI.

InBucket is used by default during development. Instead, for production
usage, you will need to set up a real SMTP service.