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SkillSync uses Nodemailer with Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) SMTP to send automated inactivity reminder emails. When the daily sync detects that a student has not solved any Codeforces problems in the past seven days, SkillSync sends them a personalized email encouraging them to return.

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Set up Brevo

1

Create a free Brevo account

Go to brevo.com and sign up for a free account. The free tier allows up to 300 emails per day, which is sufficient for most deployments.
2

Navigate to SMTP settings

In the Brevo dashboard, go to Settings → SMTP & API, then select the SMTP tab.
3

Note your SMTP credentials

Brevo’s SMTP server details are fixed:
  • Host: smtp-relay.brevo.com
  • Port: 587
These values are already hardcoded in backend/utils/mailer.js and do not need to be set as environment variables.
4

Copy your login and generate an SMTP key

Your SMTP login (the BREVO_USER value) is your Brevo account email address. Under the SMTP tab, generate a new SMTP key — this becomes your BREVO_PASS value.
5

Add credentials to your environment

Add the following variables to backend/.env or your Render service’s environment variables:
BREVO_USER=your.brevo.account@example.com
BREVO_PASS=your_brevo_smtp_api_key
EMAIL_USER=noreply@yourdomain.com
EMAIL_USER is the sender address shown in the “From” field of outbound emails. It does not need to match BREVO_USER.

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Nodemailer transporter configuration

The transporter in backend/utils/mailer.js connects to Brevo using STARTTLS on port 587: 
const transporter = nodemailer.createTransport({
    host: 'smtp-relay.brevo.com',
    port: 587,
    secure: false, // STARTTLS — upgraded from plain to encrypted after handshake
    auth: {
        user: process.env.BREVO_USER,
        pass: process.env.BREVO_PASS,
    },
});

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Email template

Inactivity emails are sent with the following properties:
FieldValue
SubjectWe Miss You on Codeforces! 💻
FromSkillSync Bot <EMAIL_USER>
ToThe student’s registered email address
The HTML body greets the student by name and encourages them to return to solving problems. Nodemailer sends both a plain-text fallback and an HTML version: 
{
  from: `"SkillSync Bot" <${process.env.EMAIL_USER}>`,
  to: email,
  subject: 'We Miss You on Codeforces! 💻',
  text: `Hi ${name},\n\nWe noticed you haven't solved any problems on Codeforces in the past week...`,
  html: `<div style="font-family: sans-serif; max-width: 480px; margin: 0 auto;">
    <h2>Hey ${name}! 👋</h2>
    <p>We noticed you haven't solved any problems on Codeforces in the past week...</p>
  </div>`
}

​
Verifying the connection

On startup, Nodemailer calls transporter.verify() and logs the result to the console. Check your Render logs (or local terminal output) after deploying:
  • Success: [EMAIL] Nodemailer ready — Gmail SMTP connected.
  • Failure: [EMAIL] Nodemailer connection failed: <error message>
If you see the failure message, double-check that BREVO_USER and BREVO_PASS are set correctly in your environment.
Brevo’s free tier allows 300 emails per day. For a class or cohort of up to a few hundred students, this limit is unlikely to be reached under normal inactivity detection conditions.
Do not use Gmail SMTP directly in production. Gmail imposes strict sending limits and requires app-specific passwords that can break if account security settings change. Use Brevo or another dedicated transactional email provider instead.

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