Email

SignalScout sends email for two things:

• Matches: a daily digest, and an immediate email for a strong match.
• Verification links, if you set AUTH_EMAIL_VERIFICATION=required.

It sends through any SMTP server, using the Nodemailer library inside the app. You need no extra service beyond your mail provider.

Set it up

Add your provider's SMTP settings to .env, then run docker compose up -d. For example, with Resend:

SMTP_HOST=smtp.resend.com
SMTP_PORT=465
SMTP_SECURE=true
SMTP_USER=resend
SMTP_PASSWORD=your-resend-api-key
SMTP_FROM=alerts@your-verified-domain.example
APP_URL=https://signalscout.example.com   # for the "Open the inbox" button

SMTP_HOST and SMTP_FROM are required. The others depend on your provider:

Port	SMTP_SECURE	Meaning
465	true	TLS from the first byte
587	false	STARTTLS. The app requires the upgrade, and never sends a password unencrypted.

A relay with no login may leave SMTP_USER and SMTP_PASSWORD empty.

Send from a domain you verified

On a provider's shared test domain, mail reaches only your own address. Every other recipient is refused, and SignalScout cannot see that. Use an address on a domain you verified with the provider, and send one test to somebody else first.

What a new monitor sends

Every new monitor emails the account that created it, with no setup:

Change the times and the scores on the monitor's Notifications screen. Open the monitor, then Notifications. You can also switch email off there.

• A digest holds up to 100 matches per email. A bigger day is split into several emails.
• Only matches found after you save the settings are sent. Your inbox keeps everything.
• A failed email is retried up to five times, and the failure is shown on the monitor.

An instance with no SMTP settings still works: the inbox fills as usual, and the Notifications screen says which setting is missing.

What an email looks like

Each email has a plain-text part and an HTML part, so a text-only mail client loses the styling and nothing else. The HTML loads no images and no web fonts, and it keeps a light background in dark-mode clients. Every match links to the post it came from. The Open the inbox button appears only when APP_URL is set.