Your email address is your login identity, but Cobblr sending email is optional. With no sender configured, password login works as normal, and minting an invite hands the link to you, the person minting it, to pass along however you like. For an instance that's just you, or you plus people you can text a link to, that's a complete setup.
What a sender adds is delivery: invites that arrive on their own, and magic-link sign-in, which requires email. The link has to reach the mailbox to prove it's yours, so a production instance never shows it in the browser.
Three ways to send
- A personal Gmail account. Fine for a personal or household instance, and
within Google's rules: turn on 2-Step Verification, create an app password,
and use it over SMTP (
smtp.gmail.com, port 587). Consumer accounts allow a few hundred recipients a day, which a personal instance will never approach. - A transactional email service. Mailgun, Resend, and Postmark are supported directly with an API key, and anything with SMTP (Mailtrap and the like) works through the generic SMTP settings. Free tiers at these services comfortably cover a self-hosted instance's volume.
- Any SMTP server you already run.
Configuring it
Set in .env:
COBBLR_AUTH_EMAIL_PROVIDER=smtp # smtp | mailgun | resend | postmark
COBBLR_AUTH_EMAIL_FROM="Cobblr <you@example.com>"
# smtp:
COBBLR_AUTH_SMTP_HOST=smtp.gmail.com
COBBLR_AUTH_SMTP_PORT=587
COBBLR_AUTH_SMTP_USER=you@gmail.com
COBBLR_AUTH_SMTP_PASS=your-app-password
# or, for a transactional provider, its key instead:
# COBBLR_AUTH_MAILGUN_API_KEY= + COBBLR_AUTH_MAILGUN_DOMAIN= / COBBLR_AUTH_RESEND_API_KEY= / COBBLR_AUTH_POSTMARK_TOKEN=
The setup builder writes this section for you, including the Gmail preset. The sender registers only when a provider is fully configured; half-set values mean Cobblr stays in link-in-the-app mode rather than failing sends. Keep the From address on something your provider is allowed to send as (for Gmail, the account itself), or messages land in spam.