Telegram alerts

BooleanSMTP sends a Telegram message the moment an outgoing email finally fails to send. Setup uses your own Telegram bot — BooleanSMTP only ever sees the bot token and Chat ID you enter. You need a bot, its bot token, and a Chat ID (which chat the bot should post into).

Create a Telegram bot

1. In Telegram, search for @BotFather and open a chat with it.
2. Send /newbot.
3. Choose a display name for your bot (for example “My Site Alerts”).
4. Choose a username for it — it must end in bot (for example mysite_alerts_bot).
5. BotFather replies with a bot token, a string that looks like 123456789:AAH8x2C.... Copy it. Keep it private — anyone with this token can send messages as your bot.

Connect Telegram in BooleanSMTP

1. In the BooleanSMTP sidebar, click Alerts.
2. Find Telegram in the provider list and click Set up.
3. Under Settings, paste the token from the previous step into Bot token.

Find your Chat ID

1. In Telegram, send your new bot any message (search for its username and start a chat).
2. Back in BooleanSMTP, with Bot token already filled in, click Detect next to Chat ID.
3. Your chat appears in a small list below the field. Click it to fill in Chat ID.

If Detect finds nothing: you haven’t sent the bot a message yet, or you’re detecting a group chat with privacy mode still on — send /mybots to @BotFather, pick your bot, go to Bot Settings → Group Privacy, and turn it off; then message the group and try Detect again.

To post into a specific topic of a Telegram forum-mode group, fill in the optional Forum topic ID (optional) field with that topic’s numeric ID. Leave it blank for a normal group or private chat.

Send a test alert

1. Leave Send alerts on. BooleanSMTP does not send real alerts through a provider that is off.
2. Click Send Test. BooleanSMTP sends a real message to Telegram using the values currently in the form.
3. Click Save.

A failed test shows Telegram’s own error text, not just “failed” — see below for what the common ones mean.

Common errors

“Bot token and Chat ID are required.” — one of the two fields is empty. Both are required.

“Bad Request: chat not found” — the bot hasn’t been started by that chat yet. Send the bot a message first, or re-run Detect to get a fresh Chat ID.

A “Retry in N seconds” message — Telegram is rate-limiting this bot. This is rare for normal alert volume; if you see it often, several sites are likely sharing one bot token — use a separate bot per site.

Detect finds your private chat but not a group — turn off the bot’s Group Privacy setting in @BotFather (see Find your Chat ID above), then message the group again.

Send Test worked, but no alerts arrive — confirm Send alerts is on and you clicked Save.

Messages land in the wrong topic, or not in the topic at all — double-check Forum topic ID (optional). Leave it blank if you’re not using forum topics.

See also: Alerts, Slack alerts, Discord alerts.