Email & Notifications

Overview

Slotara sends transactional emails for booking events, account actions, and contact form submissions. All emails use Laravel's mail system via your configured SMTP provider and are dispatched through the queue for non-blocking delivery.

{primary.fa-envelope} Email content is fully customisable. See Email Templates for all templates and {{PLACEHOLDER}} variables.

SMTP Configuration

Set your mail credentials in .env:

MAIL_MAILER=smtp
MAIL_HOST=smtp.mailgun.org
MAIL_PORT=587
[email protected]
MAIL_PASSWORD=yourpassword
MAIL_ENCRYPTION=tls
[email protected]
MAIL_FROM_NAME="Slotara"

Popular SMTP providers:

Provider Host Port Notes
Mailgun smtp.mailgun.org 587 Recommended — excellent deliverability
SendGrid smtp.sendgrid.net 587 Good free tier
Postmark smtp.postmarkapp.com 587 Optimised for transactional email
Amazon SES email-smtp.us-east-1.amazonaws.com 587 Cost-effective at scale
Gmail smtp.gmail.com 587 Development only — strict rate limits

{warning.fa-exclamation-triangle} Do not use Gmail in production. Google applies strict rate limits and may suspend sending from accounts with unusual patterns. Use a dedicated transactional email provider like Mailgun, Postmark, or SES.

Admin — Settings → Email tab showing SMTP host, port, username, and Send Test Email button

Notification Events

Event Who Receives It Template Slug
Booking created (free service) Client booking_confirmation
Booking confirmed (after Stripe payment) Client booking_confirmation
Booking cancelled by client Client booking_cancellation
Booking cancelled by staff Client booking_cancellation
Contact form submitted Admin (contact_email) contact_confirmation (to submitter)
Admin replies to a contact message Client admin_contact_reply
New user registered Admin Internal notification
Welcome email New user System template
Password reset completed User System template

{primary.fa-bell} Admin users configure per-event, per-channel preferences from Admin → Notification Preferences. Each admin controls their own settings independently.

Queue Setup

All emails are dispatched as queued jobs so they don't block HTTP responses. A queue worker processes them in the background.

Required .env setting for production:

QUEUE_CONNECTION=database

Run the worker manually (development):

php artisan queue:work --tries=3

Run with Supervisor (production — keeps worker alive):

[program:slotara-worker]
process_name=%(program_name)s_%(process_num)02d
command=php /var/www/html/artisan queue:work database --sleep=3 --tries=3 --max-time=3600
autostart=true
autorestart=true
user=www-data
numprocs=1
redirect_stderr=true
stdout_logfile=/var/log/slotara-worker.log

Restart Supervisor after adding the config:

sudo supervisorctl reread
sudo supervisorctl update
sudo supervisorctl start slotara-worker:*

{danger.fa-ban} If you leave QUEUE_CONNECTION=sync, emails send inline — blocking the HTTP response. This is fine for development but will cause slow page loads in production. Always use database (or redis) queue in production.

Testing Email Delivery

Use the Send Test Email button in Admin → Settings → Email to verify your SMTP configuration end-to-end. It sends a test message to the admin's email address.

# You can also test from the command line:
php artisan tinker

# Then:
Mail::raw('Test email from Slotara', function ($msg) {
    $msg->to('[email protected]')->subject('Test');
});

Check the mail queue for failed jobs:

php artisan queue:failed

Retry a failed mail job:

php artisan queue:retry all

If emails are not arriving, first check your spam folder, then verify your SMTP credentials with the provider's dashboard, and finally check storage/logs/laravel.log for SMTP error messages.