SMTP emails not showing in my 'sent' folder of new email provider's web-app

patatas

Was using protonmail, and when Flarum sent an email I would be able to see the sent email in my outbox.

I'm testing out a different provider, and although only the server name and login credentials have changed in the Flarum config (port is still '587' and encryption is still 'TLS'), I do not see the sent email in the outbox of the new email provider's web-app. The email itself is sent just fine though.

Additionally, when I send an email using SMTP from Thunderbird on my laptop, it successfully shows up in the outbox on the email provider's web-app. So it's definitely possible to make it work!

I'll try and reach out to the new email provider as well, but I thought I'd ask here to see if anyone has a suggestion. This is with Flarum v.1.8.10. Thanks!

KBExit

patatas I'm a little lost. So you're not using protonmail anymore?

patatas

Correct, not using protonmail anymore. I'm trying to use runbox.com, and although the emails get to their destination, nothing shows up in the 'sent' folder.

Whereas I can send an email from Thunderbird and it shows up in the 'sent' folder.

KBExit

patatas erase the field where it says encryption and try again. Curious though, why did you stop using protonmail? I use it and it's still working great for me.

patatas

They recently suspended the account of a journalist. For me that was the last straw after all the crypto & AI integration stuff. Tbh their web-app is super slow on my laptop too 😅

patatas

at any rate, this is what I get when I try the test email after erasing the encryption field in Flarum:
"Oops! Something went wrong. Please reload the page and try again."

(no email gets sent, either)

KBExit

patatas they mentioned that there was more to the story than the media was letting out and made a whole announcement about the facts. May be worth the read.

patatas try setting the encryption to SSL and see if it's any different. To make sure your UFW settings haven't changed and you're still on the same VPS Host? Is there by any chance that coincidentally, the hose blocked email posts recently due to abuse from spammers? This does tend to happen frequently.

patatas

hmm, yeah no I don't think that's the problem unfortunately - I just tried switching the settings back to the protonmail SMTP config (my subscription hasn't run out yet w/ proton) and the email sends fine, and shows up in my 'sent' folder in protonmail.

still the same behaviour as before:

flarum can send emails w/ both Proton and runbox, but the email only shows up in the 'sent' folder on proton. (SSL gives same result as TLS: email sends but does not appear in 'sent' folder on runbox)

Thunderbird can also send emails with both, but emails show up in the 'sent' folder in both proton and runbox web-apps

luceos

Im not entirely 100% sure. But from what I've seen from experience, I assume the following.

The sent folder is not a universally accepted folder for sent email. Some use outbox or similar. This also implies that whether an email ends up in this folder while sent using any of the protocols offered, is not a guarantee. As such I assume proton, and some others, automatically make a copy to the designated folder when seeing any emails through the SMTP port and others. Therefor, your new provider might not do this "gimmick" or QOL thing.

patatas

luceos Ah ok. Yeah after poking around for a bit more, I saw that Thunderbird has a checkbox in account settings -> copies & folders, that says "when sending messages, automatically place a copy in 'sent' folder on [email address]".

So it does at least appear to be possible for both the client and server to do this. Bit of a niche case, but maybe useful to others?

luceos

patatas not everyone will want a copy of sent email taking up storage on the mailbox. Especially if you use it for a community, the amount of mails might easily fill up to max capacity of the account and limit sending.

clarkwinkelmann

SMTP is an email relay protocol. It has no knowledge of any storage method.

Email inboxes and sent folders are usually managed using the IMAP protocol. Most mail clients use both protocols at the same time, after successfully sending an email with SMTP they will save a copy over IMAP.

I suppose Proton implemented a custom feature where any email sent to the SMTP server is automatically copied to IMAP (or directly sever-side though a custom protocol)

If you use a professional SMTP server like Mailgun, you can configure custom hooks and behavior. I don't think they have a built-in action for IMAP, but you can get a copy of each email sent to a custom API endpoint, then automatically log them in a custom storage or forward them to an IMAP server using custom code.

patatas

@luceos oh absolutely, for a large forum it would be really undesirable behaviour!

@clarkwinkelmann yeah for now I'm going to try Resend's free plan, which gives 100 emails a day, which will be plenty for now. It looks like they store the previous 15 days of emails, and they have options for webhooks as well. Good excuse for me to learn something new 😉

appreciate everyone's thoughts, thanks.