Email provider
Configure SMTP, Resend, or AWS SES for transactional and recall emails.
autonnel sends transactional emails for order events (receipt, shipped, delivered, refunded) and recall emails for abandoned carts. Before any emails can go out, you must configure a provider. Each deployment has one email provider configuration.
Prerequisites
- Your sending domain must have SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records configured. Without them, messages are likely to land in spam or be rejected outright. Set these up with your DNS provider before testing.
- For SMTP accounts protected by two-factor authentication, you need an app-specific password. Your regular password will not work.
Navigate to the setting
Go to Settings → Email Provider. The tab shows the currently active provider and lets you switch to a different one.
Provider options
The providers available in the dropdown depend on what is enabled in your Autonnel integration configuration.
SMTP
Any SMTP server works: Gmail, Mailgun SMTP, Postmark SMTP, a self-hosted server, or your host’s outgoing mail service.
Required fields:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Host | SMTP server hostname, e.g. smtp.mailgun.org |
| Port | Typically 587 (STARTTLS) or 465 (SSL/TLS) |
| Username | SMTP login username |
| Password | SMTP login password or app-specific password |
| From email | The From address, e.g. orders@yourstore.com |
| From name | Display name shown to recipients, e.g. Your Store |
Port 465 automatically enables SSL/TLS. Any other port uses STARTTLS unless you override it.
Resend
Resend is a transactional email service with a developer-friendly API.
Required fields:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| API key | Your Resend API key (starts with re_) |
| From email | Must be on a domain you have verified in Resend |
Resend requires domain verification on their side before you can send from a custom address. Follow their domain verification guide to add the required DNS records.
SES (AWS Simple Email Service)
Available when SES is enabled in your integration options.
Required fields:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Access key ID | AWS IAM access key |
| Secret access key | AWS IAM secret |
| Region | AWS region where SES is configured, e.g. us-east-1 |
| From email | A verified email address or domain in SES |
AWS SES starts in sandbox mode by default, which limits sending to verified addresses only. Request production access from the AWS console before going live.
How email sending works
Emails are not sent synchronously. When an order event triggers an email (or the recall cron fires), autonnel queues the email and a cron job picks it up and dispatches it via your configured provider. On transient failure the email is retried automatically; after reaching the maximum retry count it is marked as failed.
You can view all queued and sent emails under Orders → Emails.
Verify the connection
After saving credentials, click Test connection in the settings UI. This calls the provider’s verification endpoint:
- SMTP: opens a connection and checks authentication.
- Resend: verifies the API key by making an authenticated request to the Resend API.
A green result means the credentials are valid and the provider is reachable. It does not guarantee deliverability — you should still send a real test email to confirm SPF/DKIM are passing.
Caveats
- SMTP is not available when deploying to Cloudflare Workers. Cloudflare Workers do not support outbound TCP connections to SMTP ports, which means traditional SMTP transports (Postmark SMTP, Gmail SMTP, custom SMTP servers) cannot send mail from a Workers deployment. If you’re on Workers, use Resend or AWS SES, both of which send via HTTPS APIs. If you must use SMTP, deploy autonnel on Node (VPS, Docker, etc.) instead.
- Always verify your sending domain (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) before going live. Skipping this step is the most common reason emails land in spam.
- For Gmail SMTP with 2FA enabled, use an app-specific password from your Google account settings. Your regular password will fail with a credentials error.
- Resend’s free tier caps sending at 100 emails per day. If you use recall emails or have meaningful order volume, upgrade to a paid plan before launch.
- Switching providers takes effect immediately for all new emails queued after the save. Emails already in the queue continue with whatever credentials were active when they were enqueued — they will fail if the old credentials are revoked.
Related
- Email templates — editing and localizing the templates that get sent
- Recall — configuring abandoned cart recovery intervals
- Orders → Emails — viewing the send queue and delivery status