Send from a custom address without an extra mailbox

What this covers

To send email from your app, you need one real mailbox to authenticate against the SMTP server. The From address your recipients see can be [email protected] — a no-reply address that is included free with no extra mailbox. Any other From address requires its own mailbox. This means you can send transactional emails (password resets, notifications) from a clean noreply address using a single mailbox account.

Before you start

You need at least one active mailbox on your domain (included with your CM Cloud email plan). Have your mailbox email address and an IMAP/SMTP password ready — generate one from the portal: Services → your email service → 'Get IMAP Password'.

How to do it

1. Sending From [email protected] is included free — your existing mailbox is allowed to send from it without buying an extra mailbox. Any other From address requires its own mailbox (add one from the catalog). Authenticate with your real mailbox and set the From address to [email protected]. (Older mailbox getting a 'sender not owned'/rejected error? Contact support to enable noreply.)
2. Generate an SMTP password: open your portal, go to Services, select your email service, and click 'Get IMAP Password'. Copy the password — it is shown once.
3. In PocketBase: go to your admin panel → Settings → Mail settings. Set SMTP host to mail.cmcloudhosting.com, port 587, enable STARTTLS. Set username to your real mailbox address (e.g. [email protected]) and password to the one you just generated.
4. Still in PocketBase Mail settings: set the Sender address field to [email protected]. Set Sender name to whatever recipients should see. Save.
5. Send a test email from PocketBase (there is a 'Send test email' button in Mail settings). Confirm it arrives and shows the noreply address as the sender.
6. For other frameworks (Node.js nodemailer, Python smtplib, Laravel Mail, etc.): set the SMTP auth credentials to your real mailbox, and set the 'from' field in the message to [email protected].

What our team checks

Support can help if the test email fails to send, if messages are rejected by the SMTP server, or if you need to confirm your mailbox credentials are correct.