Sending Emails

MakerKit uses the popular package nodemailer to allow you to send emails.

Normally, you would use a service for sending transactional emails such as SendGrid, Mailjet, MailGun, Postmark, and so on.

These are all valid, and it doesn't really matter what you use. In fact, as long as you provide the SMTP credentials for your service, you shouldn't be needing any other change.

Email Configuration

To add your service's configuration, fill the environment variables in your production environment.

This is best done from your Hosting provider's safe environment variables, or from your CI/CD pipeline.

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

The details above are provided by the service you're using.

Note: Some email providers don't like the EMAIL_SENDER format. If you're having issues, try using just the email address, such as info@makerkit.dev.

Sending Emails

To send emails, import and use the sendEmail function, such as below:

interface SendEmailParams {
  from: string;
  to: string;
  subject: string;
  text?: string;
  html?: string;
}
 
import { sendEmail } from '~/core/email/send-email';
 
function sendTransactionalEmail() {
  const sender = configuration.email.senderAddress;
 
  return sendEmail({
    to: `youruser@email.com`,
    from: sender,
    subject: `Achievement Unlocked!`,
    html: `Yay, you unlocked an achievement!`,
  });
}

Using react.email to render emails

Makerkit's newest versions use react-email to render emails: this is a great library that allows us to write emails using React components.

By default, Makerkit's only email is the one sent when inviting members to a Makerkit application - but you can leverage this library to write your own emails for your application.

For example, here's the code for the email sent when inviting members:

src/lib/emails/invite.ts
interface Props {
  organizationName: string;
  organizationLogo?: string;
  inviter: Maybe<string>;
  invitedUserEmail: string;
  link: string;
  productName: string;
}
 
export default function renderInviteEmail(props: Props) {
  const title = `You have been invited to join ${props.organizationName}`;
 
  return render(
    <Html>
      <Head>
        <title>{title}</title>
      </Head>
      <Preview>{title}</Preview>
      <Body style={{ width: '500px', margin: '0 auto', font: 'helvetica' }}>
        <EmailNavbar />
        <Section style={{ width: '100%' }}>
          <Column>
            <Text>Hi,</Text>
 
            <Text>
              {props.inviter} with {props.organizationName} has invited you to
              use {props.productName} to collaborate with them.
            </Text>
 
            <Text>
              Use the button below to set up your account and get started:
            </Text>
          </Column>
        </Section>
 
        <Section>
          <Column align="center">
            <CallToActionButton href={props.link}>
              Join {props.organizationName}
            </CallToActionButton>
          </Column>
        </Section>
 
        <Section>
          <Column>
            <Text>Welcome aboard,</Text>
            <Text>The {props.productName} Team</Text>
          </Column>
        </Section>
      </Body>
    </Html>
  );
}

Testing Emails locally

Makerkit uses InBucket - 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.

To run the InBucket platform, we need Docker running on our machine.

To start the InBucket service, run the following command:

npm run inbucket:start

InBucket will now be running at localhost:9000. 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.

Ethereal

In previous versions Makerkit used Ethereal. If you are running an older version, please refer to the below.

Makerkit used Ethereal to allow you testing your emails without using a real email account. To use Ethereal, you should add the following environment variables to your project, using a secure environment:

ETHEREAL_EMAIL=
ETHEREAL_PASSWORD=

If not set, Makerkit will automatically create an account for you on-the-fly and print the credentials in the console. You can then use these credentials to log in to Ethereal and see your emails.

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