Recently I was locked out of my own Ghost blog platform because they decided they were going to add Email 2FA. I also cannot add any other authors because that requires email verification.
Today I was looking at installing Bonfire and came across this:
Bonfire requires working email for user signups, password resets, and notifications. Most installations will need email configuration before the instance is usable.
Setting up email is a pain in the ass, costs money, is dependent on 3rd parties, violates privacy, and is just completely unnecessary. Why wouldn’t you give users the option to not use it? It’s infuriating!
Ghost needs emails for a couple of reasons.
(Required) Ghost does not do user passwords. They use magtic links, which they send out via email when signing in. It’s just how they have chosen to do it. You can ask them why they don’t want to save passwords.
(Optional) Ghost has a newsletter function. If you enable it, you need to setup a bulk email service, like Mailgun. Even regular SMTP won’t really work there. It can send out a newsletter everytime a blog post is published, so the members will get notified.
I recently had to do this email dance with a Ghost instance setup, where most of the email ports are blocked on the network. I know how you feel. I also wanted to just use passwords, but not currently possible with Ghost.
Other services might do the same as Ghost. I do host many services, that does not require email setup though.