Use a custom server to send Ory Identity messages to users

The Ory Network comes with SMTP email sending configured out of the box. Ory emails are sent from this address:

{project.name} via Ory <[email protected]>

info

You must send emails using your SMTP server to change the sender address (from_address) and sender name (from_name).

Send emails using your SMTP server

You can send emails from your own SMTP server. Follow these steps to configure Ory to use a custom SMTP server:

Ory Console

1. Go to Branding → Email configuration in the Ory Console
2. Toggle the Advanced Settings switch
3. Provide the configuration for your SMTP server

Ory CLI

1. Download the Ory Identities config from your project and save it to a file:

   ## List all available projects
   ory list projects
   
   ## Get config
   ory get identity-config {project-id} --format yaml > identity-config.yaml

2. Add the configuration for your custom SMTP server

   config.yml

   courier:
     smtp:
       connection_uri: smtp://username:password@server:port/
       from_address: [email protected]
       from_name: My Company

3. Update the Ory Identities configuration using the file you worked with:

   ory update identity-config {project-id} --file updated_config.yaml

SMTP security mechanisms

SMTP has six different security mechanisms. Most SMTP services today use Explicit StartTLS with trusted certificates.

1. Recommended: StartTLS with certificate trust verification. This is the most common option today:

   smtp://username:password@server:port/
2. StartTLS without certificate trust verification:

   smtp://username:password@server:port/?skip_ssl_verify=true
3. Cleartext SMTP uses no encryption and is not secure. This option is often used in development environments:

   smtp://username:password@server:port/?disable_starttls=true
4. Implicit TLS with certificate trust verification:

   smtps://username:password@server:port/
5. Implicit TLS without certificate trust verification:

   smtps://username:password@server:port/?skip_ssl_verify=true
6. Implicit TLS with certificate verification which works if the server is hosted on a subdomain and uses a non-wildcard domain certificate:

   smtps://username:[email protected]:1234/?server_name=my-mailserver.com

Integrations

Reference the sample connection URIs to send emails using different providers.

Mailgun

Use the following connection URI to send emails using Mailgun:

smtp://{smtp-user}:{smtp-password}@smtp.mailgun.org:587

# For example:
# smtp://some-user%40mailgun.example.org:[email protected]:587

AWS SES SMTP

Use the following connection URI to send emails using AWS SES SMTP:

smtp://{smtp-user}:{smtp-password}@email-smtp.{region}.amazonaws.com:587/

# For example:
# smtp://theuser:[email protected]:587/

Postmark

Use the following connection URI to send emails using Postmark:

smtp://{YOUR_POSTMARK_SEVER_API_TOKEN}:{YOUR_POSTMARK_SEVER_API_TOKEN}@smtp.postmarkapp.com:587/

# For example:
# smtp://thetoken:[email protected]:587/

Send emails using an HTTP server

Ory Identities supports sending emails using an HTTP server. This is useful if you want to customize the email content or use a service that doesn't provide an SMTP server.

Ory Console

1. Go to Branding → Email configuration in the Ory Console.
2. Select HTTP Server.
3. Configure your HTTP server.
4. Click Save.

Ory CLI

1. Download the Ory Identities config from your project and save it to a file:

   ## List all available projects
   ory list projects
   
   ## Get config
   ory get identity-config {project-id} --format yaml > identity-config.yaml

2. Add the configuration for your custom HTTP server

   config.yml

   courier:
     delivery_strategy: http
     http:
       request_config:
         url: https://mail-sender.example.com
         method: POST
         body: base64://... # See below for the default payload and available variables
         headers:
           Content-Type: application/json
         auth: # leave out, if your server doesn't require authentication, but note that we don't recommend that
           type: basic_auth # or api_key
           config:
             user: my-username
             password: my-password
             # if you want to use an API key (type: api_key), use the following config instead:
             # name: my-api-name
             # value: my-api-key-value
             # in: header # or cookie

3. Update the Ory Identities configuration using the file you worked with:

   ory update identity-config {project-id} --file updated_config.yaml

Payload

The payload of the HTTP request is a JSON object that's generated using a Jsonnet template. By default, the following Jsonnet template is used:

function(ctx) {
  recipient: ctx.recipient,
  template_type: ctx.template_type,
  to: if "template_data" in ctx && "to" in ctx.template_data then ctx.template_data.to else null,
  recovery_code: if "template_data" in ctx && "recovery_code" in ctx.template_data then ctx.template_data.recovery_code else null,
  recovery_url: if "template_data" in ctx && "recovery_url" in ctx.template_data then ctx.template_data.recovery_url else null,
  verification_url: if "template_data" in ctx && "verification_url" in ctx.template_data then ctx.template_data.verification_url else null,
  verification_code: if "template_data" in ctx && "verification_code" in ctx.template_data then ctx.template_data.verification_code else null,
  login_code: if "template_data" in ctx && "login_code" in ctx.template_data then ctx.template_data.login_code else null,
  registration_code: if "template_data" in ctx && "registration_code" in ctx.template_data then ctx.template_data.registration_code else null,
  subject: if "template_data" in ctx && "subject" in ctx.template_data then ctx.template_data.subject else null,
  body: if "template_data" in ctx && "body" in ctx.template_data then ctx.template_data.body else null
}

The courier passes the following object as the ctx parameter into the Jsonnet template:

Variable	Type	Description
recipient	String	The email address of the recipient.
template_type	String	The type of the template. See the list of available templates for a full list
template_data	Object	The data that should be included in the email. See the list of variables for each template for a full list.

In most cases, the default payload should be sufficient.

Troubleshooting

In general, if you have problems setting up email delivery, you can view outgoing messages on the Monitoring → Email Delivery page in the Ory Console.

note

The Sent state of an email only indicates whether Ory Identities successfully "handed" off the email to the SMTP server.

Emails do not arrive

The best way to figure out, why an email did not arrive is checking the Email Delivery dashboard in the Ory Console. It will show all emails sent by your project, along with its delivery state. If the Ory Network could not reach your SMTP server or there was an authentication failure, it will be indicated here along with the error message.

If the email's status is Sent, but it did not arrive, please check the spam folder or the logs of your custom SMTP server (if configured).

Emails are marked as spam

If you're using a custom domain, but no custom SMTP server, some (or all) emails the Ory Network sends, can be marked as spam or blocked by the email providers of your users, such as Gmail. This is due to the phishing/spam protection these providers have in place to protect their users.

To read more, see Automated Emails but in short: we recommend setting up a custom SMTP server, if you use custom domains.