Setting up riseup.net as an email provider for Mastodon

Heyo! It’s been a while, but I managed to do something quite neat if you’re on a budget and want to start a Mastodon instance. As a de-facto requirement for a Mastodon instance, you’ll need to have an email server hooked up. This can get pricey, so an alternative is an ideal way to save money long-term. This is where riseup comes in. They provide an email service for activists for free (as long as you have an invite) Unfortunately, you cannot use a custom domain with riseup yet, so when emails are sent to users of your Mastodon server, it’ll be an @riseup.net address. This article details the steps you’ll need to take to configure riseup for your very own Mastodon server.

Getting a Riseup email

You’ll need an invite to join riseup, so I suggest asking your radical friends for an invite (please don’t bug me for an invite code, I will not give one to you unless I know you). Once you have that, you can create a new account with the username being related to the name of your new Mastodon instance (e.g. emeraldsocial is the riseup username for my own instance). Congrats! You’ve got a riseup email now! The address will be [username]@riseup.net.

Connecting your email to Mastodon

The next step is to actually connect SMTP endpoints to Mastodon’s .env.production, located in the root folder of your live installation. Really, any text editor will work, but I decided to use vim because I’m used to it (editor wars intensifies). In the Sending mail section of .env.production, add the following lines:

# Sending mail
# ------------
SMTP_SERVER=mail.riseup.net
SMTP_PORT=587
SMTP_LOGIN=[username]
SMTP_PASSWORD=[averysecurepassword]
SMTP_FROM_ADDRESS=[username]@riseup.net
SMTP_AUTH_METHOD=plain

Then you can save and exit that file (on vim, this is :wq) and finally test it out by logging into a new session on your Mastodon account from an unknown IP address, resetting your password, or any other action which triggers an email notification. Now you’ve got a functional email setup for your Mastodon server at no cost to you! I hope you enjoyed this article and will share it across the world.