SMTP Authentication

For sending outgoing emails through the Postal SMTP server you will need to generate a credential through the Postal web interface. This credential is associated with a server and allows you to send mail from any domain associated with that domain (or the organization that owns the domain.)

Authentication types

When authenticating to the SMTP server, there are three supported authentication types.

• PLAIN - the credentials are passed in plain text to the server. When using this, you can provide any string as the username (e.g. x) and the password should contain your credential string.
• LOGIN - the credentials are passed Base64-encoded to the server. As above, you can use anything as the username and the password should contain the credential string (Base64-encoded).
• CRAM-MD5 - this is a challenge-response mechanism based on the HMAC-MD5 algorithm. Unlike the above two mechanism, the username does matter and should contain the organization and server permalinks separated by a / or _ character. The password used should be the value from your credential.

From/Sender validation

When sending outgoing email through the SMTP server, it is important that the From header contains a domain that is owned by the server or its organization. If this it not valid, you will receive a 530 From/Sender name is not valid error.

If you have enabled "Allow Sender Header" for the server, you can include this domain in the Sender header instead and any value you wish in the From header.

IP-based authentication

Postal has the option to authenticate clients based on their IP address. To use this, you need to create an SMTP-IP credential for the IP or network you wish to allow to send mail. Use this carefully to avoid creating an open relay.