Hey everyone!
I’m working on a Firebase project and need to figure out how to automatically send welcome emails when admins create new user accounts through the console.
Right now I’m stuck because Firebase console doesn’t seem to have built-in email automation features. The standard suggestion is to have admins manually send account info to new users, but that’s not practical for our production app, especially with payment processing involved.
I’m looking for ways to automate this whole process. From what I can tell, the solution probably involves:
- Cloud Functions - set up triggers when users get created
- Email services - maybe something like SendGrid or similar
- Firebase Extensions - possibly the email trigger extension
Anyone here successfully built an automated welcome email system for Firebase? Would really appreciate hearing about your setup, any code examples you can share, or just general tips on how to approach this.
Thanks for any help you can offer!
I use Firebase Auth triggers with Nodemailer in Cloud Functions - works great. I don’t bother with extensions and just handle everything directly in the function code. When onCreate fires, I grab the user data and send templated emails through Gmail SMTP or AWS SES. You get complete control over email content and timing, plus you won’t get burned when third-party extensions break after Firebase updates. Just make sure you set proper timeout values in your functions config - email APIs can be painfully slow and you don’t want your functions dying. Also, store your email templates in Firestore so you can update them without redeploying functions every time.
totally! firebase extensions are super helpful. using sendgrid is great for automating emails, but keep an eye on costs, they can add up quickly if you have a large user base!
I dealt with this same issue six months ago. Firebase Cloud Functions + the Trigger Email extension worked great for me. You just create a function that fires when users sign up and dumps the email data into a collection the extension watches. Pro tip: handle the async stuff properly or you’ll lose emails when errors happen. Set up error logging right away too - debugging email delivery is a pain otherwise. The extension works with SendGrid and other providers, so you’ve got options. Took me about a day to get it solid in production.
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