Email Notifications

PicPeak sends automated emails for gallery lifecycle events using a queue-based processor with retry logic.

Email types

Gallery creation --- sent to the customer with the gallery link and optional password.
Expiration warning --- sent before a gallery expires.
Gallery link resend --- manually triggered from the admin panel or API.

SMTP configuration

Configure your SMTP provider in .env:


SMTP_HOST=smtp.gmail.com
SMTP_PORT=587
SMTP_SECURE=false
[email protected]
SMTP_PASS=your-app-specific-password
[email protected]

For Gmail, use an app-specific password . Regular account passwords will not work.

SendGrid example


SMTP_HOST=smtp.sendgrid.net
SMTP_PORT=587
SMTP_SECURE=false
SMTP_USER=apikey
SMTP_PASS=your-sendgrid-api-key

Multilingual templates

Email templates support multiple languages. PicPeak includes English and German templates out of the box. The template language is selected based on event or system settings.

Template editor

Edit email templates from the admin panel. The editor provides:

HTML template editing with variable placeholders.
Live preview of the rendered email.
Test email sending to verify formatting.

The email wrapper function (wrapEmailHtml()) in emailProcessor.js applies consistent styling and layout to all outgoing emails.

Email queue

Emails are processed through a queue with automatic retry on failure. Monitor the email queue status from the admin panel or by checking the backend logs:


docker compose logs backend | grep email

Logo in emails

Email logos use the FRONTEND_URL value to construct the image URL. Make sure this is set to your publicly accessible domain so email recipients can see images correctly.

If API_URL is set, it is used for email asset URLs. Otherwise it defaults to http://localhost:3001, which will result in broken images for external recipients.