Email system notifications can be used to warn of system issues like failing hard drives or failed backup scripts. To send emails a mail server can be configured but it is more complicated than it needs to be for simple notifications. Another issue with a local mail server is that some ISP’s may be blocking outbound emails making this method potentially unreliable.
A simpler alternative is to let an external mail service like Gmail send the actual email. To achieve this s-nail mail processing system will be used with the optional SMTP extension. The downside of this approach is that you will need to store you password in a plain text configuration file and allow “less secure apps” in Google settings. To avoid compromising the primary email account I opted to create a dummy account just for sending system notifications. This way, even if the Gmail account is compromised there is no real harm as no Emails are stored in that account.