---
title: "Email"
description: "Set up and configure email notifications for your self-hosted Sentry instance"
url: https://develop.sentry.dev/self-hosted/configuration/email/
---

# Self-Hosted Email

##### Note

After changing configuration files, re-run the `./install.sh` script, to rebuild and restart the containers. See the [configuration section](https://develop.sentry.dev/self-hosted.md#configuration) for more information.

## [Outbound Email](https://develop.sentry.dev/self-hosted/configuration/email.md#outbound-email)

Sentry only supports SMTP for sending outbound email notifications. It does not supports other protocols or APIs for sending email. However, Sentry's built-in SMTP server powered by [egos-tech/smtp](https://gitlab.com/egos-tech/smtp) is sufficient enough to handle multiple use-cases. For more details on other use-cases, please refer to their documentation.

### [As built-in SMTP server](https://develop.sentry.dev/self-hosted/configuration/email.md#as-built-in-smtp-server)

This is the default configuration for self-hosted Sentry installations. Yet, this is not recommended for production use-cases due to various email provider requirements regarding sender reputation, SPF, DKIM, DMARC, etc.

All you need to do is to set a valid address for `mail.from` setting in `config.yml` and the [FQDN](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fully_qualified_domain_name) of your Sentry instance for `SENTRY_MAIL_HOST` in `.env`.

### [As AWS SES relay](https://develop.sentry.dev/self-hosted/configuration/email.md#as-aws-ses-relay)

This is recommended to use in production if you are using AWS SES for sending emails. You need to provide `SES_USER`, `SES_PASSWORD`, and `SES_REGION` values in your `.env` file. Set the mail configuration on `sentry/config.yml` file as it is.

### [External SMTP relay](https://develop.sentry.dev/self-hosted/configuration/email.md#external-smtp-relay)

This is recommended to use in production if you have an external SMTP server for sending emails. There are two ways to configure Sentry to use an external SMTP server:

1. Set the relevant `mail.*` settings in `config.yml` file to point directly to your external SMTP server. Refer to our [email service documentation](https://develop.sentry.dev/backend/email.md) for all the details on what each setting means and does.
2. Use the built-in SMTP server as a relay by setting a few environment variables on the `docker-compose.yml` file. You will need to leave the configuration on `sentry/config.yml` file as it is.

For the second option, it is preferred to modify through `docker-compose.override.yml` file so that your changes are not lost when updating self-hosted Sentry installation. Here is an example configuration:

```yaml
x-restart-policy: &restart_policy
  restart: unless-stopped

services:
  smtp:
    <<: *restart_policy
    image: registry.gitlab.com/egos-tech/smtp
    volumes:
      - "sentry-smtp:/var/spool/exim4"
      - "sentry-smtp-log:/var/log/exim4"
    environment:
      MAILNAME: ${SENTRY_MAIL_HOST:-}
      SMARTHOST_ADDRESS: "mail.example.com"
      SMARTHOST_PORT: "587"
      SMARTHOST_USER: "smtp_user"
      SMARTHOST_PASSWORD: "smtp_password"
      SMARTHOST_ALIASES: "*.example.com"
```

##### Warning

Because of the way configuration is layered, if you update `mail` settings through the web interface, you will need to also comment out the `mail.host: 'smtp'` default in your `config.yml` in order for your desired settings to be picked up.

## [Inbound Email](https://develop.sentry.dev/self-hosted/configuration/email.md#inbound-email)

Sentry has very limited inbound mail support through [Mailgun](https://documentation.mailgun.com/docs/mailgun/user-manual/receive-forward-store/receive-forward-store). You can find all the information regarding how to set this up over at our [inbound email service documentation](https://develop.sentry.dev/backend/email.md#inbound-email).