Turning to the community as a total newbie at selfhosted mail
I’m trying to spin up self-hosted mail server for the first time.
I’ve spent about 6 hrs on this error and no luck

Setup
domain 1 (mail.example.com) –> Cloudflare –> pfsense router –> haproxy for ssl offloading and reverse proxy for webaccess to admin and webmail and other services–> Ubuntu 20.04 VM

domain 2 (mail.differentdomain.com) –> Cloudflare –> A, MX, cname, dkim, dmarc, spf –> pfsense router

pfsense router –> port forwards for all protocols except 80/443 –> Ubuntu 20.04 VM

Process

Configured Cloudflare for both domains. I’m not sure this setup will work, but since I can’t start sending test emails I can’t start figuring out how to route the second domain properly
Using a base image for VM so docker/ docker compose are already installed and working
Installed mailcow, after reviewing numerous online install guides
After running git clone and ./generate_config.sh I modified ports in mailcow.conf to point to 8080 and 8443 and switched skip ssl = y
No other changes to conf or docker.yml
Opened all mail related ports in ufw and router from https://mailcow.github.io/mailcow-dockerized-docs/prerequisite-system/ (not sure this is safe but I figured I could get it running first before securing)
did the docker-compose up -d and got to the admin interface
changed admin password and configured domain (differentdomain.com) saved a reset SOGO
created a mailbox user amateurhour@differentdomain.com /w password
upon login to SOGO received ‘An error occurred while communicating with the mail server’
SOGO UI shows ‘No mailbox selected’
Did some digging and seems like this isn’t a normal/ regular issue (though I found about 3-4 different mentions on github/ here none with a clear resolution I could follow)
Currently dovecote shows no longs in the admin interface so I don’t know how to pull those
I’m pasting the SOGO log below with domains hidden, happy to provide more if needed

I give up, would really appreciate some ELI5 (explain like I’m 5) help here

Logs
11/14/2020, 9:32:53 PM notice [57]: mailcowdockerized_watchdog-mailcow_1.mailcowdockerized_mailcow-network “GET /SOGo.index/ HTTP/1.1” 200 2531/0 0.007 - - 0 - 25
11/14/2020, 9:32:24 PM notice [57]: mailcowdockerized_watchdog-mailcow_1.mailcowdockerized_mailcow-network “GET /SOGo.index/ HTTP/1.1” 200 2531/0 0.005 - - 0 - 25
11/14/2020, 9:31:02 PM notice [57]: mailcowdockerized_watchdog-mailcow_1.mailcowdockerized_mailcow-network “GET /SOGo.index/ HTTP/1.1” 200 2531/0 0.009 - - 0 - 26
11/14/2020, 9:30:55 PM notice [57]: 192.168.1.130 “POST /SOGo/so/amateurhour@differentdomain.com/Mail/unseenCount HTTP/1.0” 200 21/31 0.010 - - 0 - 26
11/14/2020, 9:30:55 PM notice [57]: [ERROR] <0×55b121534c20[SOGoMailAccount]:0> Could not connect IMAP4
11/14/2020, 9:30:55 PM notice <0×0×55b1215b1640[NGImap4Client]: login=amateurhour@differentdomain.com(pwd) address=<0×0×55b1214a8350[NGInternetSocketAddress]: host=172.22.1.250 port=143>>
11/14/2020, 9:30:55 PM notice
11/14/2020, 9:30:55 PM notice
11/14/2020, 9:30:55 PM notice //amateurhour%40differentdomain.com@172.22.1.250/?tls=NO&tlsVerifyMode=none
11/14/2020, 9:30:55 PM notice user=amateurhour@differentdomain.com, pwd=yes
11/14/2020, 9:30:55 PM notice [57]: [ERROR] <0×0×55b12113c500[NGImap4ConnectionManager]> IMAP4 login failed:
11/14/2020, 9:30:55 PM notice [57]: <0×55b121534c20[SOGoMailAccount]:0> renewing imap4 password
11/14/2020, 9:30:55 PM notice <0×0×55b1214ec480[NGImap4Client]: login=amateurhour@differentdomain.com(pwd) address=<0×0×55b1215932e0[NGInternetSocketAddress]: host=172.22.1.250 port=143>>