Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is an internet protocol that allows mail servers to send and receive email messages. Within KnowledgeOwl, SMTP is used as a way to send email messages generated within/by KnowledgeOwl to your own mail server for relaying/sending to your readers.
SMTP is required for Subscriptions and is optional for Reader emails.
Why use SMTP when it's optional? Using your own SMTP service can help:
- Avoid quarantining or spam filtering of emails sent directly from KnowledgeOwl
- Create a much stronger brand identity and make communications from KnowledgeOwl seem more official to your readers
- Enable you to remove the reference to KnowledgeOwl from reader emails (by default, reader emails are sent form support@knowledgeowl.com, for example)
- Make your security/IT teams happier if they like having in-house control and visibility into things
To configure SMTP services:
- Click on your profile icon/name in the upper right.
- Select SMTP from the dropdown.
You define an SMTP service once for your account and then you can select which features and/or knowledge bases use those services. You can create multiple SMTP services for use by different knowledge bases (Subscriptions only; Reader emails all use a single SMTP service).
Within KnowledgeOwl, there are three "flavors" of SMTP you can configure:
- Unauthenticated: The SMTP service doesn't require a username/password combination
- Basic authentication: The SMTP service uses a username/password (or username/app password)
- OAuth2: The SMTP service uses an OAuth2 authentication flow, which is a more secure authentication type than basic authentication. It requires a client/secret combination and its own authorization flow.Currently, KnowledgeOwl supports Microsoft OAuth2 only. If you need us to add OAuth2 for another provider, please contact us and let us know which provider you're interested in.
