Category: Configuration
Updated

This solution is summarized from an archived support forum post. This information may have changed. If you notice an error, please let us know in Discord.

Invitation Emails Not Sent On Self-Hosted Appsmith (Amazon SES “554 Transaction Failed: Empty Address”)

Issue

I am not receiving invitation emails on my self-hosted Appsmith installation. While the test email works fine, the invitation email is not going out. Upon checking the logs, I found that there is an exception while sending emails via Amazon SES with an error message “554 Transaction failed: Empty address”. I have checked the values of APPSMITH_MAIL_FROM and APPSMITH_REPLY_TO in docker.env, and they seem to be correct. How can I fix this?

Resolution

This article explains how to troubleshoot missing invitation emails on a self-hosted Appsmith installation when Amazon SES returns the error:

554 Transaction failed: Empty address

Even when the test email succeeds, invitation emails may still fail if the email configuration is incomplete.

Symptoms

  • Test email works from Admin Settings → Email.
  • Invitation emails do not arrive.

  • Server logs show an exception from Amazon SES:

    554 Transaction failed: Empty address
  • Appsmith is deployed using Docker with environment variables loaded from docker.env.

Root Cause

The issue occurs when APPSMITH_MAIL_FROM is present in docker.env but set to an empty value. SES rejects outbound emails because the message contains a blank From field.

Example of incorrect configuration:

APPSMITH_MAIL_FROM=

Resolution Steps

  1. Open your docker.env file.

  2. Confirm that both variables contain valid, non-empty email addresses:

    APPSMITH_MAIL_FROM=no-reply@my-domain.com
APPSMITH_REPLY_TO=no-reply@my-domain.com
  3. Save the file.

  4. Restart your Appsmith installation so the environment variables reload:

    docker-compose down
docker-compose up -d
  5. Re-send an invitation email and verify delivery.

Additional Notes

  • Both variables must contain valid sender addresses for certain Appsmith email workflows.
  • If SES continues failing, confirm that the sender and domain are verified in the AWS SES console.