Purelymail Calendar

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How to send meeting invites with Purelymail

Purelymail handles email and CalDAV calendar storage, but it does not include a built-in meeting-invite scheduler. To send a calendar invitation that appears as a real RSVP-able event in Gmail, Apple Mail, and Outlook, you need an iTIP/iMIP layer on top of your Purelymail SMTP.

Purelymail Calendar is the unofficial open-source companion app that adds that layer. It composes the iCalendar REQUEST payload, sends it from your own Purelymail SMTP, writes the event to your Purelymail CalDAV calendar, and tracks attendee replies over IMAP.

The flow.

Organizer
Picks time, title, attendees in Purelymail Calendar.
→
CalDAV PUT
VEVENT written to purelymail.com/webdav/.
→
SMTP send
iTIP REQUEST email to each attendee via your Purelymail SMTP.
→
IMAP poll
Attendee replies pulled from your inbox; PARTSTAT applied to CalDAV.

One Purelymail mailbox provides SMTP, IMAP, and CalDAV. Purelymail Calendar orchestrates them.

What runs where.

Step What you do Where it runs
Compose event Set time, title, attendees, description. Purelymail Calendar web UI.
Save event Stored as an iCalendar VEVENT. Purelymail CalDAV (/webdav/).
Send invite iTIP REQUEST email with .ics attachment. Your Purelymail SMTP (smtp.purelymail.com).
Track replies Pull METHOD:REPLY emails every five minutes. Your Purelymail IMAP (imap.purelymail.com).
Apply RSVP PARTSTAT updated on the VEVENT. Purelymail CalDAV.

Why the standards matter.

Gmail, Apple Mail, Outlook, and Thunderbird only render a message as a meeting invitation when the MIME structure follows the iTIP / iMIP rules from RFC 5545 and RFC 6047: a multipart/mixed outer body, a multipart/alternative with a text part and a text/calendar; method=REQUEST part, and a matching application/ics attachment.

Sending a plain email from Purelymail webmail with an attached .ics file does not trigger the calendar UI in most clients. The MIME shape is what makes the Accept / Decline buttons appear.

One easy-to-miss rule: CalDAV servers must not accept events that contain a top-level METHOD property, per RFC 4791 §4.1. The same .ics you email must have METHOD:REQUEST; the version you PUT to CalDAV must have it stripped. Purelymail Calendar does that split automatically.

What you do not need to do.

You do not need a separate SMTP relay, a transactional email provider, or a third-party invite service. The invite is sent from your own Purelymail mailbox, so attendees see the message coming from your real address and your domain's SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records determine deliverability.

Where to go next.

Sign in to Purelymail Calendar  →