Invite people / staff

[Kelvin_Isievwore]

I have invited 6 people in the past, but now I keep getting this error when trying to invite new authors to my blog. I did the mail config using these steps here Configuration - Ghost Developer Docs both for secure and non-secure, but still got the same error:

[2026-08-31 17:07:48] WARN Error sending email: Failed to send email. Reason: Connection timeout. Please check your email settings and resend the invitation.

SEE SCREENSHOTS FOR MORE

• What’s your URL? https://blog.btrust.tech/

• What version of Ghost are you using? Digital Ocean 1-Click Droplet

• What configuration? mysql, Linux, Chrome

• What browser? Chrome

• What errors or information do you see in the console?

  • WARN Error sending email: Failed to send email. Reason: Connection timeout. Please check your email settings and resend the invitation.

• What steps could someone else take to reproduce the issue you’re having? Invite staff via the UI

  
  
  

[acburdine]

This is likely because DigitalOcean blocks outbound SMTP (see this page). What you’ll likely want to do is update the port your Mailgun transport connects on (and enable the secure option for good measure) - docs.

Note that DigitalOcean blocks 25, 465, and 587, so you’ll want to use port 2525 instead.

Your config would end up looking something like:

{
  "mail": {
    "from": "...",
    "transport": "SMTP",
    "options": {
      "service": "Mailgun",
      "host": "smtp.mailgun.org",
      "port": 2525,
      "secure": true,
      "auth": {
        "user": "...",
        "pass": "..."
      }
    }
  }
}

I’ll look at updating Ghost’s docs to note the 2525 port for Mailgun if running on DigitalOcean.

[Kelvin_Isievwore]

@acburdine

this page

Thanks, Acburdine! Using secure: true didn’t work, but secure: false with port:2525 worked!

Thanks again for your help!

[acburdine]

Added a note to the docs site here: Connection timeout when sending email on DigitalOcean - Ghost Developer Docs