Self-Hosted: No Automatic Email Verification After User Signup

Hey everyone,
I’m running ZITADEL in a self-hosted setup and I’m having an issue with email verification during user registration.

Problem:
When a new user signs up through the standard registration flow, they do not receive an automatic verification email, even though my SMTP setup is correct and test emails are working.
The only way it works right now is:
I have to manually open the user in the admin panel and trigger the “Verification Email” from there. Only then the email gets delivered properly.

What I’m missing / can’t find:
I can’t find any setting that forces a user to automatically receive a verification email right after signup (something like “email verification required on signup”).
I assumed this might be configurable per project, organization, or auth flow – but I found nothing in the console or in any policy that enables this behavior.

Question:
How can I enable automatic email verification for every new signup?
Do I need to configure a specific auth flow or hook to make this work?

Thanks in advance – this is a critical feature for my use case.

Ask Inkeep•11/23/25, 12:59 PM

Hi @Somnovate, I'm an AI assistant for ZITADEL. While a team member reviews this question, I'll see if I can find relevant sources for your question.

Ask Inkeep•11/23/25, 1:00 PM

Answer

I wasn't able to find a direct answer in the official documentation, but here's what I found:

Onboard Users : This guide discusses self-registration through the built-in register form and mentions that when users register locally, an initialization email with a verification code is sent by default (1) .
Register and Create User : This documentation covers API-based user creation and mentions that when creating users, you can define whether to verify their email address before activating the user (2) .

Potentially relevant GitHub issue:

There's an open GitHub issue from October 2025 that describes a similar scenario where email verification codes behave unexpectedly during the login flow (3) . While this doesn't directly address your automatic email sending issue, it suggests there may be ongoing work around email verification flows.

Next steps:

I'd recommend clicking the "Ask for help" button to tag a team member who can review your specific SMTP configuration and organization settings to identify why automatic verification emails aren't being triggered during self-registration.

Ask Inkeep•11/23/25, 1:00 PM

To learn more, see the sources I considered:

[1] Onboard Users
[2] Register and Create User
[3] [Bug]: Email verification code not working if user tries to login directly

Ask Inkeep•11/23/25, 1:00 PM

Feel free to tag @Ask Inkeep with additional questions.

AAsk Inkeep To learn more, see the sources I considered: [[1] Onboard Users](https://zita...

Ask InkeepAPP•11/25/25, 7:40 PM

Got it. Tagging @Rajat for additional help.

SSomnovate **Hey everyone,** I’m running ZITADEL in a self-hosted setup and I’m having an i...

fernando_b•11/26/25, 6:41 PM

Try this, it worked for me