Using Google SMTP with Supabase Custom SMTP

[kangmingtay]

Hey everyone, i've been hearing feedback about how challenging it can be to get google SMTP working properly with Supabase. I've tried setting this up with a trial google workspace account and this is what i've discovered.

1. The sender email and SMTP username has to be your google workspace admin email.
2. The SMTP password used has to be an app password. Google workspace doesn't make it easy to to figure out how to create this. You need to enable 2FA on your workspace account first (not inside the admin console but in https://myaccount.google.com/)
3. If you want to use smtp-relay.gmail.com only port 465 works. If you want to use smtp.gmail.com, you can use port 465 or 587 (both ports worked for me).

I'm also gonna include some screenshots below on what those steps look like:

For smtp-relay.gmail.com

(The "Require TLS encryption" option doesn't seem to affect anything during my testing)

For smtp.gmail.com

A lot of this was figured out through trial and error - i don't have explanations as to why only port 465 works with smtp-relay.gmail.com and / or why the TLS encryption option has no effect on SMTP.

As to whether this is a Supabase Auth bug, i highly doubt that it is because we use the native golang smtp library . If anyone still has issues getting google SMTP to work, i would recommend to switch to one of these SMTP providers:

• Resend
• Sendgrid
• Mailgun
• AWS SES SMTP

[dr-starchildren]

Very much appreciated these instructions. I had been using Google's SMTP service since January based on them.

I wanted to let people know about an error that I had starting a couple days ago. My signup functionality stopped working and it was only obvious in supabase logs.
In supabase logs, I had this error:
ERROR /signup | database error on committing or rolling back transaction: write failed: write tcp 127.0.0.1:35174->127.0.0.1:5432: write: broken pipe

After troubleshooting for several hours, I narrowed it down to a SMTP auth error. When I swapped SMTP providers everything worked fine (after many other failed attempts to solve the issue). No idea why my account for Google just stopped working, but if anyone encounters this error, hopefully it'll save you time.

[TheOtherBrian1]

Hi @dr-starchildren, I believe the issue was resolved in this PR

[mehdinathani]

can i use my free gmail account?

[vianneypercq]

Very useful tutorial. Thank you very much, it works perfectly for my project.

[sagar98cyber]

You are using GOOGLE SMTP with SUPABASE in Production?
How is that working out for you.

[infinia-yzl]

Thanks to this guide, I was able to set it up successfully in 2024.

• Used smtp-relay.gmail.com.
• Set up 2FA.
• Created App Password after enabling 2FA.
• Used App Password in Supabase settings.
• I set up an alternate email alias: no-reply@domainname.com and configured the "Sender Email" in Supabase settings to no-reply@domainname.com. Not sure if the alternate email alias is necessary, but I did it anyway.

[00fff]

Hello i am having issues setting mine up currently. i keep getting "message": "Error sending confirmation mail". Could you explain how you got Google Smtp to work for you?

[marloncommona]

Is this working for you with the Auth services of supabase? I replicated everything and did a successful test with this tool: https://www.gmass.co/smtp-test But it does not work with the user invite feature from supabase.

[marloncommona]

strangely I only got it to work using smtp.gmail.com ✌️