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This article shows how to create an email newsletter using Mule as shown below.
Here, I have used NewsAPI, you can use any API of your choosing. Almost all APIs need clients to authenticate themselves before serving the request. So, the first step is to register for a dev account on the portal and get an API key.
Are you having trouble sending emails from your WordPress site?
One easy way to solve this is by sending WordPress emails using the Gmail SMTP server.
In this article, we will show you how to send emails from your WordPress site using the Gmail SMTP server.
Your WordPress site sends emails to notify you of new user registration, lost password reset, automatic updates, and even notifications from your contact forms.
By default, WordPress uses the PHP mail function to send out email notifications. However, this function doesn’t work as expected due to a number of reasons.
Most WordPress hosting companies restrict usage of this function to prevent abuse and spam.
Spam filters on popular email service providers check incoming emails to monitor if they are sent from authentic mail servers. Default WordPress emails fail this check and sometimes may not even make it to the spam folder.
SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is the industry standard for sending emails. Unlike the PHP mail function, SMTP uses proper authentication, which increases email deliverability.
Gmail provides SMTP service that you can use to send out emails from your WordPress site. If you just want to send WordPress notification emails to yourself and few users on your site, then Gmail SMTP servers are the best option.
However, if you are planning on sending newsletter emails using WordPress, then you should use a mass emailing service provider, like Sendinblue or Mailgun.
You can use your free Gmail account to send out WordPress emails. However, for better deliverability, we recommend using paid G Suite.
With G Suite, you get your own professional branded email address such as (name@yoursite.com).
G Suite requires you to add MX records to your domain name which means that your emails will appear to be coming from your own domain name boosting authenticity and ensuring better deliverability.
We use G Suite for WPBeginner and can honestly say it’s the best.
If you prefer written instructions, then please continue reading.
If you decided to use G Suite, then you first need to set up your domain to work with Google Apps. We have a step by step tutorial on how to set up a professional email address with G Suite.
The rest of the instructions are the same whether you are using a paid or free Gmail account.
First thing you need to do is install and activate the WP Mail SMTP plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
WP Mail SMTP is the best WordPress SMTP plugin on the market. It allows you to easily use any SMTP server to send WordPress emails with higher deliverability.
We recommend buying the paid version called WP Mail SMTP Pro which gives you access to premium support, more mailers, and white-glove set up by one of their experts.
Upon activation, you need to visit Settings » WP Mail SMTP page to configure the plugin settings.
First, you need to make sure that you use your Gmail email address in the ‘From Email’ field. Next, you need to provide the sender’s name.
WP Mail SMTP plugin offers two ways to connect your WordPress site to the Gmail servers.
The first method uses OAuth Authentication. This is a more secure method to send emails using Gmail servers.
The second method is by entering Gmail SMTP settings manually. This method is not recommended because it is less secure.
That being said, let’s set up WordPress to use Gmail SMTP for sending emails.
This method is recommended for all users. It is more secure and once you set it up, you’ll never have to do that again.
You need to start by selecting Gmail as your mailer and set the return path to be the same as sender.
Next, you will see the option to enter your Client ID, Client Secret, and a URL in ‘Authorized redirect URI’ field.
Let’s set up these fields.
Visit the Google Developers Console website and create a new project.
If you don’t see the blue button to create a project, then you can also click on select a project drop-down and create a new project.
You’ll be asked to provide a name for your project. Give it a memorable name, so that you can easily recognize it in the future.
After that, click on the create button to continue.
Developer console will now create your project and take you to its dashboard. Google offer developers access to many of their APIs and services. You need to enable the APIs that you will be needing for this project.
Click on Enable APIs and services button to continue.
This will bring you to the APIs library page. Next, you need to type Gmail in the search box to quickly find the Gmail API and click to select it.
You will now see an overview of the API and what it can do. Simply click on the ‘Enable’ button to continue.
Now that your API is enabled, the next step is to create credentials that you can use in your WP Mail SMTP plugin settings.
Click on the create credentials button to continue.
On the next screen, you will need to select ‘Web browser JavaScript’ in ‘Where you’ll be calling the API from’ field. After that click on the ‘User Data’ option.
To continue, click on the ‘What credentials do I need?’ button.
You will now be asked to provide a name for your OAuth client name. You can enter ‘WP Mail SMTP’ here.
Under JavaScript origins field, you need to add your website’s domain name. Next, you need to copy and paste the authorized redirect URL from WP Mail SMTP plugin settings.
After that, click on the ‘Create client ID’ button to continue.
Next, you need to enter a name for OAuth consent screen. You can put the plugin’s name here.
After entering the details, click on the continue button and the developer console will show your client ID. You can copy and paste this in the WP Mail SMTP plugin’s settings page. However, you will still need to add your client secret key.
Go ahead and click on the Done button to move on.
You will now be taken to your project’s credentials page. On this page, you can see your recently created credentials listed here. You need to click on the edit icon next to your credentials to continue.
This will bring you to the edit credentials page where you will be able to see your client secret key. You need to copy and paste the key in your plugin’s settings page.
Return back to plugin’s settings page in your WordPress admin area. Now that you have both client ID and client secret keys, you need to click on the save settings button to continue.
The plugin will now store your settings and reload the page. After that, you need to scroll down to the bottom of the settings page and click on the ‘Allow plugin to send emails using your Google account’ button.
This will take you to your account on Google, and you will be asked to give the website permission to send emails on your behalf.
Click on the Allow button to give permissions.
After that, you will be redirected back to your website where you will see a success message.
This method allows you to manually connect to Gmail’s SMTP servers to send your WordPress emails.
First, you need to visit Settings » WP Mail SMTP page to configure the plugin settings.
You need to start by providing the Gmail address you want to use in the ‘From Email’ field, and your name in the From ‘Name’ field.
Next, you need to select ‘Other SMTP’ as your mailer and check the box next to return path.
After that, scroll down to the Other SMTP section to configure more settings.
Here is the exact configuration you need to add in the plugin settings:
Once you are done, click on the save changes button to store your settings.
That’s all, you have successfully set up WP Mail SMTP to use Gmail SMTP servers.
Note: If you use method two, please know that it’s less secure because your password is stored in text. You can enhance this by using the constants tip, but we strongly recommend using Method 1.
WP Mail SMTP plugin allows you to test your email settings, so you can make sure that everything is working properly.
You need to visit Settings » WP Mail SMTP page and click on the ‘Email Test’ tab. Simply provide an email address that you can access in the send to field and click on the send email button.
You will see a success message. You can now check your inbox to see a message with the subject line ‘WP Mail SMTP: Test Email to…’.
That’s all, you have successfully setup your WordPress site to send emails using Gmail SMTP servers.
If you want even more functionality, you should try WP Mail SMTP Pro.
With the Pro version of the plugin, you can connect with:
You also get additional features like email logs, ability to fine-tune / control which notification your WordPress site sends, and more.
We have seen users encounter few issues when using Gmail SMTP with certain shared hosting configurations.
Take the following steps to fix the Gmail SMTP issue:
We hope this article helped you learn how to send email in WordPress using the Gmail SMTP server. You may also want to see our list of the best contact form plugins for WordPress, and our comparison of the best email marketing services for small business.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
The post How to Send Email in WordPress using the Gmail SMTP Server appeared first on WPBeginner.
One of the most commonly asked questions on WPBeginner is how to fix WordPress not sending email problem.
Many of our beginner level users ask us why their contact form plugin is not sending emails, or why they are not seeing any WordPress notifications.
In this article, we will show you how to fix the WordPress not sending email issue, so your website can send emails more reliably and bypass the spam folder.
The most common reason for emails going missing is that your WordPress hosting server is not properly configured to use the PHP mail() function.
Even if your hosting is configured to use it, many email service providers like Gmail and others use a variety of tools to reduce email spam. These tools try to detect that an email is really coming from the location that it claims to be from.
Emails sent by WordPress websites often fail this test.
This means that when an email is sent out from your WordPress site (contact form plugin, admin notification, etc), it may not even make it into the recipient’s spam folder let alone inbox.
This is why we recommend not using WordPress to send your email newsletter.
This is also the reason why we recommend everyone to use SMTP for sending emails in WordPress.
What is SMTP?
SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is the industry standard for sending emails.
Unlike the PHP mail() function, SMTP uses proper authentication which leads to high email deliverability.
WordPress has a WP Mail SMTP plugin that configures your WordPress site to send emails using SMTP instead of the PHP mail() function.
You can use it to connect with any popular SMTP services like SendinBlue, Gmail (G Suite), Office365, Amazon SES, etc.
With that said, let’s take a look at how to fix the WordPress not sending email issue.
Whatever SMTP service you choose, you’ll need to have the WP Mail SMTP plugin installed on your site. This lets you switch WordPress from using the built-in PHP mail() function to using your SMTP service.
First, install and activate the WP Mail SMTP plugin. If you’re not sure how, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Next, click on WP Mail SMTP in your WordPress dashboard to configure the plugin settings.
You will need to start by entering the name and business email address you want your site’s emails to come from. Make sure you use the same email address here that you’ll be using for your SMTP mailing service.
You can choose to force emails to use this name and email address, even if other plugins (like WPForms) have different settings. WP Mail SMTP will override the other plugins’ settings.
After that, you need to choose a SMTP mailing service for your site.
For the sake of this tutorial, we’re going to setup SMTP using Sendinblue. If you’d prefer to use Gmail or Office365, then we’ve got instructions on those later in this article as well.
To finish setting up WP Mail SMTP, you’ll need to create an account with Sendinblue. We’ll move on to that next, and then come back to finalizing the setup on WP Mail SMTP.
Sendinblue is a popular email service provider. They let you send a large number of emails with high deliverability.
You can use Sendinblue to send up to 300 emails per day for free which is more than enough for most small websites.
These could be emails from your contact form, new user account details, password recovery emails, or any other emails sent through your WordPress site.
First, you’ll need to go to the Sendinblue website to create an account. Click the ‘Sign up free’ button to set up your account.
Once you’ve created an account, you’ll see your Sendinblue dashboard. If you didn’t complete your profile during the setup stage, you’ll be prompted to do so here.
Next, you’ll need to contact the support team to ask them to verify your account, so you can send emails through Sendinblue.
We recommend contacting the support team at this stage as it can take around 24 hours for them to verify your account. You can move on with the other steps while you’re waiting.
Go to sendinblue.com/contact and write a message that includes:
You may be asked for further information. If not, you should receive an email from Sendinblue letting you know that your account has been approved.
Once you’ve sent your message to the contact team, you can move on to add your domain name to the site.
Remember, you don’t need to wait for a reply before moving on with the next stage of this tutorial.
First, you’ll need to set up a subdomain. This is like a separate section of your site. We suggest using mail1.yourdomain.com.
Note: Your WordPress host may not allow you to use mail as your subdomain, which is why we’ve put the 1 in there too.
To add your subdomain, log in to your web hosting account and find the Domains section of your control panel.
For the sake of this tutorial, we’ll demonstrate how to do that on our example hosting account on Bluehost. After you login, go to Domains » Subdomains.
You can then type in your subdomain and click ‘Create’.
If you’re using other hosting companies or if your DNS is managed at domain registrar like Domain.com or GoDaddy, then follow their respective instructions.
After you have created the subdomain, you will need to add it in your Sendinblue account.
In your Sendinblue account, go to ‘Settings’ then find ‘Your Senders’ and click the ‘Configure’ button:
Next, click on the ‘Domains’ tab and then click the ‘Add a New Domain’ button.
Enter the entire subdomain (e.g. mail1.yoursite.com) and check the box next to “I would like to use this domain name to digitally sign my emails (SPF, DKIM, DMARC)”.
Next, click ‘Save’, and you’ll see a popup with several DNS records listed.
These lines of code let Sendinblue authorize your domain name.
Tip: Don’t worry if you close this popup by accident. You can get back to it by clicking the ‘Authenticate This Domain’ button next to your subdomain:
Open up a new browser tab and log back into your web hosting account. You need to find your domain and open up the DNS records.
In Bluehost, you do this by going to Domains » My Domains then clicking ‘Manage’ next to your domain.
You’ll need to add 3 of TXT records provided by Sendinblue here.
First, scroll down to find the TXT section of your DNS records. It will look something like this:
Then, click ‘Add Record’.
Complete the first record as follows:
Host Record: mail._domainkey.mail1
Record Type: TXT
TXT Value: Copy this from Sendinblue.
TTL: 1 day
Tips: Host Record might be called Host or Name by your web host. Change mail1 if you used something different for your subdomain. Record Type may not be required. TXT Value might also be called TXT data: it’s the first, long piece of code in the Sendinblue details. TTL could be 24 hours or 86400 seconds (both are equivalent to 1 day). If you’re using GoDaddy, set it to 1 hour.
Once you have added the first record, click ‘Save’.
Next, you need to add the second record. Complete it as follows:
Host Record: mail1
Record Type: TXT
TXT Value: v=spf1 include:spf.sendinblue.com mx ~all
TTL: 1 day
Once you’re done, click ‘Save’.
After saving that, you need to add the third record. Complete it as follows:
Host Record: mail1
Record Type: TXT
TXT Value: Copy this from Sendinblue. It’s the third piece of code.
TTL: 1 day
Once you’re done, go ahead and save that record too.
Warning: Sendinblue also has a fourth piece of code for a DMARC record. You don’t need this, and we strongly recommend skipping it unless you’re experienced with DMARC configuration.
After you’ve added your records, go back to Sendinblue. For each record, click the button ‘Record Added. Please Verify It.’ It may take 24-48 hours before Sendinblue is able to verify your records, but it’s often much quicker.
If nothing happens when you click that button, the records can’t yet be verified. Check again later and see if they’ve been verified. Once they have, you’ll see the word ‘Configured’ next to the records in green:
You can keep going with this tutorial while you wait for the verification to take place.
Go back to your WP Mail SMTP settings in your WordPress dashboard. You should have already entered the From Email and From Name, but if not, you can do that now.
Leave the ‘Return Path’ checkbox unchecked as this option isn’t used by Sendinblue.
Next, click on ‘Sendinblue’ for your mailer.
You’ll need go to your Sendinblue account to find your API key. Just click on the link below the ‘API Key’ box and your Sendinblue account dashboard will open up at the right place, in a new tab.
Copy the v3 API key from this page.
Congratulations. You’ve now set everything up. The final step is to send a test email to make sure everything is working.
Go to the ‘Email Test’ tab of WP Mail SMTP and enter an email address to send an email to. This will default to the site’s admin email. Click ‘Send Email’.
You should see the message ‘Test HTML email was sent successfully!’ Check your inbox to see whether it’s arrived. It’ll look like this:
Note: If your Sendinblue account isn’t yet activated, you’ll get the message: [permission_denied]: Unable to send email. Your SMTP account is not yet activated.
As you can see from the WP Mail SMTP plugin’s list of mailer options, you don’t have to use Sendinblue. While it’s our top free recommendation, there are other options that you can use including Office 365, Gmail / G Suite, Amazon SES, etc.
Using Gmail or G Suite with WP Mail SMTP to Fix WordPress Emails
If you have a Gmail or G Suite account, then you can use that to send your emails. You won’t need to enter your email login details in WordPress when you’re using the WP Mail SMTP plugin.
To use Gmail or G Suite, set up WP Mail SMTP as shown above, and then click the ‘Google’ option for your mailer.
You will need to check the ‘Return Path’ box.
After that you will be asked to enter a ‘Client ID’ and ‘Client Secret’. To get these details, you’ll need to create a web application in your Google account. Don’t worry if that sounds a bit daunting. You can find full instructions in this article on using Gmail to send your WordPress emails.
Note: You can use this process with a regular Gmail account, but your email deliverability will be much better if you are using G Suite. See our guide on how to setup a professional email address with Gmail and G Suite.
There are a couple of key drawbacks to using Gmail or G Suite, however.
One is that you may need to contact your web host to get them to install the right certificate to get it working.
Another is that if you change the email address in the future, you’ll need to go through the entire process again. This will include creating a new web application.
Using Office 365 / Outlook with WP Mail SMTP to Fix WordPress Emails
If you use Microsoft Office 365 or Outlook for your regular email account, then you can also use that to send out emails through WordPress. This isn’t a recommended option, though, because it’s less secure.
You’ll need to set up WP Mail SMTP as above, then click the ‘Other SMTP’ option. This will open up a form to complete. Fill it out using the following settings:
SMTP Host: smtp.office365.com
Encryption: TLS
SMTP Port: 587
Auto TLS: (leave switched on)
Authentication: (leave switched on)
SMTP Username: Your Office 365 account email address
SMTP Password: Your Office 365 account password
A key problem with this method is that it requires storing your password in plain text within WordPress. This isn’t secure and your password will be visible to any other administrators on your account. You can use the instructions in the WP Mail SMTP app to record it in your wp-config.php file instead.
For more details, see the detailed guide on how to setup Outlook with WP Mail SMTP.
Using Amazon SES with WP Mail SMTP to Fix WordPress Emails
Amazon AWS platform has a Simple Email Service (SES) that you can use to fix the WordPress email issue.
The best part about Amazon is that it lets you send up to 62,000 emails every month for free. The downside is that the setup is a bit more challenging for beginners which is why we don’t recommend it as our preferred option.
But as you can imagine, a lot of professionals and experts use Amazon SES for their WordPress email SMTP service, so we couldn’t write an article without mentioning it.
If you’r interested in setting up Amazon SES with WordPress, then see the full instructions on how to setup Amazon SES with WordPress.
Whatever mailer you decide to use, always remember to use the ‘Test Email’ tab to ensure that emails are being successfully sent.
You must make sure to check your inbox too, and confirm that you’ve received the test email.
We hope this article helped you learn how to fix WordPress not sending email issue. You may also want to see our list of the most common WordPress errors and how to fix them.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
The post How to Fix WordPress Not Sending Email Issue appeared first on WPBeginner.
Last day, I have shown you how can you enable WordPress email logs on your blog. If you are offering some service or something like that, you might want to consider using an SMTP plugin for your blog. For our users, we will always recommend the best one – WP Mail SMTP. WP Mail SMTP […]
The post WP Mail SMTP Configuration For Amazon SES appeared first on WPArena.
Have you encountered an error that says, “PHPMailer SMTP Error: Could not connect to SMTP host?”
Let’s solve it together.
Postfix, being an open-source MTA (mail transfer agent), has gained a lot of attention after Sendmail. The functionality of both is the same — they are used to route and deliver emails.
Are you looking for the best SMTP service providers?
An SMTP service provider helps you reliably send emails from your website to your users.
SMTP servers are especially configured to ensure that your emails reach users’ inbox and don’t end up in the junk mail folder.
In this article, we will share the best SMTP service providers with high email deliverability. We will also show you how to send your WordPress emails using these SMTP services.
All WordPress websites rely heavily on email to do various tasks. For example:
By default, WordPress is configured to send emails using the PHP mail() function. This is the primary reason why users complain about WordPress not sending email issue.
There are a number of problems with the default mail method, and why it doesn’t work.
Most hosting providers don’t have this function configured properly. Some even disable it completely to prevent their servers from abuse.
Misusing this function is a common problem as it does not require authentication and can be used to send spam emails.
Even if the mail function is working on your WordPress hosting, sometimes your WordPress emails may still end up in spam because most spam filters will verify sender email, location, domain name, and it would flag your site email as suspicious or spam.
The only way to fix this problem is by using an SMTP server to send WordPress emails.
What is SMTP?
SMTP or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is the industry standard to send emails on the internet. It uses proper authentication which increases the chances that your emails will actually get delivered in users inbox.
There are both paid and free SMTP service providers. In fact, you can get a free SMTP account with a business email address from Google or Outlook.
However, there is a limit on how many emails you can send using the traditional email services. Usually, these free email providers like Gmail or Outlook don’t want you to use their SMTP servers for automatic emails like those sent by a WordPress website.
This is why you need to sign up with one of the well-known SMTP service providers to ensure that your emails are properly delivered. Don’t worry, a lot of the top SMTP companies offer very generous free SMTP plans that are good enough for most websites.
Let’s take a look at the best SMTP service providers with high deliverability.
There are many SMTP service providers that allow you to send mass emails, WordPress emails, transactional emails, and more.
However, each one of them is different in terms of features, pricing, ease of use, number of emails allowed on free plan, and most importantly their track record on deliverability.
Following are the best SMTP service providers that offer higher deliverability and best set of features.
Mailjet is the best SMTP service provider on the market. They offer a beginner friendly email marketing and transactional SMTP email service.
You can easily integrate Mailjet with your website and use it to send WordPress emails using SMTP. They offer a highly robust API with SMTP relay service to ensure that your emails don’t end up in spam.
Other notable features include drag and drop editor with email templates, built-in email marketing features, transactional SMS, marketing automation, and more. They also offer A/B testing and advanced statics to monitor your open rate, delivery rates, clicks, and more.
Pricing: Mailjet offers a free plan with up to 6000 emails every month (200 emails per day). Their paid plans start from $8.69 per month (billed annually) with 30,000 emails per month (no daily limit).
SendinBlue is another top SMTP email service provider on the market. They offer a powerful marketing platform with transactional emails, email marketing, SMS marketing, and live chat.
It works beautifully with WordPress and other third-party platforms like OptinMonster, Salesforce, Google Analytics and many more. They also offer powerful personalization and marketing automation features to help with your marketing campaigns.
SendinBlue has a highly extensible API and SMTP relay service which instantly improves your email delivery for transactional emails.
Pricing: SendinBlue has a forever free plan with 300 emails per day. Their paid plans start from $25 per month with 40,000 emails per month and no daily sending limits.
Mailgun is a popular SMTP service provider for developers and businesses. They offer powerful APIs to send transactional emails.
It is easy to integrate into your WordPress website. Whether you are an eCommerce store, a membership website, or a small business, Mailgun offers an easy to scale SMTP service to send your marketing and transactional emails.
It is designed for developers and lacks some of the beginner-friendly features of other SMTP providers on the list.
Pricing: Mailgun offers a ‘pay as you go’ plan with first 10,000 emails free. The free plan is more than enough for small websites. Their paid plans are fairly competitive in the market. However if you want a dedicated IP and improved deliverability, then it starts at $79 per month with 1 dedicated IP address.
SendGrid is a powerful cloud-based SMTP email service provider that allows you to send mass emails without managing an SMTP server. It offers higher scalability with a powerful set of features.
Their SMTP relay is easy to setup and works with any WordPress site. It includes delivery optimization tools, email analytics, email templates with a simple email editor, and integrations with third-party apps and services.
If deliverability is your main concern, then SendGrid offers great tools to further improve email delivery including dedicated IP addresses and domain name authentication tools.
Pricing: They offer a free plan with first 40,000 emails free and then 100 emails per day. Their paid plans start at $14.95 per month.
AWS or Amazon Web Services is the industry leader in cloud computing infrastructure. They also offer Amazon SES or Amazon Simple Email Service as an add-on to their web services.
It is a powerful cloud-based SMTP service for marketers and developers to easily send marketing, notification, and transactional email campaigns.
It offers higher deliverability with cost efficiency of AWS. You get a lot of powerful features, but most of them are suitable for advanced users and developers.
Amazon SES can be easily integrated into your WordPress site with the help of plugins (more on this later in the article). Depending on your usage, Amazon SES can be the cheapest SMTP service in the market.
Pricing: If your website is hosted on AWS, then you can use their free tier to send 62,000 emails each month. For other websites, pricing starts at $0.10 for every 1,000 emails you send.
G Suite is Google’s productivity suite for businesses. It allows you to use calendar, Google Drive, Docs, Photos, and Gmail with your own domain name.
This allows you to get a professional business email address while still using the familiar interface of Google. G Suite allows you to use Google SMTP servers to send out emails which means you can set up an email account for your WordPress site and then use it to send WordPress emails.
However, it is only suitable for small business websites and blogs because it can only send 2,000 messages a day. For details see our article on how to set up a professional email address with G Suite
Pricing: Starts from $6 per user per month.
Postmark is another easy to use SMTP service provider for websites, marketers, and businesses. It offers lightening fast email delivery with simpler pricing and easy integration.
Sending transactional emails is their expertise, which means they are focused on deliverability and speed. They offer easy to follow email analytics, account security, mobile-friendly responsive templates, message events triggered with simple webhooks, and more.
Pricing: Starting from $10 per month for 10,000 emails then $1.25 per 1,000 emails.
Aside from the top SMTP providers that we mentioned above, there are literally dozens of others like Mandrill, Moosend, Pepipost, etc.
The large number of choices make it difficult for users to select the best SMTP service provider for their needs.
When choosing an SMTP service, you need to look at three main factors: email deliverability, scalability, and pricing.
Since every platform in our list offers high email deliverability and with exception of G Suite, all platforms can scale to send millions of emails per day, we will focus on pricing since it’s often a big deciding factor.
At first glance, the free plans look very competitive across all platforms. If you have a small website, then you really can’t go wrong with any of our top three SMTP recommendation: Mailjet, SendinBlue, and Mailgun.
However as your website grows, pricing becomes a pretty big factor. Mailjet offers the most competitive pricing with scalability and most importantly reliable technical support.
For example, if you’re sending 150,000 emails per month, you will pay $68.95 per month, and you will have a dedicated IP. Whereas for the same amount of sending requirement and dedicated IP, SendGrid will cost $79.95 per month and MailGun will cost $109 per month.
Now if you have a technical team in house, then nothing will beat the pricing of Amazon SES because its $0.10 per 1000 emails. This means 150,000 emails per month will only cost $15 on Amazon SES. The big catch is that their technical support is quite limited. For dedicated IP, you just have to pay $24.95 per month.
For large sites, there really isn’t a more cost efficient SMTP solution than Amazon.
Our pick for best SMTP providers for small business: Mailjet and SendinBlue.
Our pick for best SMTP providers for large business and eCommerce websites: Amazon SES.
Once you sign up with an SMTP service provider, the next step is to integrate it with your WordPress site. This would replace the default WordPress mail function with your SMTP service, so your email actually gets delivered.
WP Mail SMTP is the best WordPress SMTP plugin which allows you to easily send WordPress emails using any SMTP service provider.
It is available as both a free SMTP plugin and the premium version with more features. The paid version gives you access to email controls to choose which WordPress notification emails to send using your SMTP service provider.
You also get email logs and easier setup for popular SMTP providers like Mailgun, SendGrid, Amazon SES, Gmail, Outlook, G Suite, and more. The Elite plan gives you access to their White Glove Setup where an expert from their team will set up your SMTP service.
First thing you need to do is install and activate the WP Mail SMTP plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, you need to visit WP Mail SMTP » Settings page and enter your license key. You can find this information from your account on WP Mail SMTP website.
After entering your license key, the next step is to configure your mailing service.
Scroll down to the Mail section and enter the from email address. This is the email address you have added to use with your SMTP service provider.
After that, you need to enter a from name. Ideally, this should be your website title, so that your users know where the email is coming from.
Scroll down to the Mailer section. If your SMTP service provider is listed there, then you can select it here.
Choosing an SMTP provider will show you settings specific to that service provider with a link to detailed instructions on how to enter the required information.
However, if your SMTP server is not listed there, then select ‘Other SMTP’ option. WP Mail SMTP works with all SMTP providers.
Below that you will now see the information you need to enter. You can find this information on your SMTP service provider’s website under your account.
You will need the following information.
Now, the plugin recommends that instead of saving your username and password in plain text, you add it to your wp-config.php file. See our guide on how to edit wp-config.php file.
After entering all the required information, don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Settings’ button to store your changes.
You can now send a test email to see if everything is working fine. Switch to the Email Test tab and enter an email address to send a test email.
WP Mail SMTP will now send a test email to the address you entered. Check your inbox to make sure that you got the test email.
Congratulations, you have successfully set up your WordPress site to use your SMTP service provider.
We hope this article helped you find the best SMTP service provider to send WordPress emails. You may also want to see our guide on easy ways to grow your email list faster.
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The post 7 Best SMTP Service Providers with High Email Deliverability (2019) appeared first on WPBeginner.
Branda is all about giving you fast easy control over white labeling WordPress…and quite frankly she rocks it. She just got some special new configurations for managing users, lightning fast setup, compatibility checks, and even more brand magic.
“How is that possible”, you ask? Branda 3.0 was unveiled just a month ago with an incredible new design and setup wizard. It was a big hit by the way. Thanks, everyone for the feedback.
But with Branda now sporting our signature hero interface we were able to quickly add +25 additions and feature upgrades.
So let’s dive in and explore the highlight features in Branda 3.1.
Not using Branda yet? Get a copy with a free 30-day WPMU DEV trial. No obligation. Cancel at any time and keep Branda as our gift.
Have an exclusive offer that requires site registration? Want to limit spam registrations? Looking to allow specific signups to access different user roles? Time to try Branda’s brand new Signup Code features.
Signup Codes make it so only people with a special code can register to your site.
Here’s what’s new:
Allow a visitor to register as a subscriber without a code or create a special code that lets a user set up a Writer or Editor account. Not only do signup codes improve function, but it also helps eliminate unnecessary bot signups. Thank you again, Branda!
We’re continually looking for ways to simplify configuration for people managing multiple sites, from setting up new sites to site migration. The Branda import and export tool makes it easy to move your configuration options across multiple sites.
In 3.1 that includes the logo, background and favicon image files for the Admin Bar, DB Error Page, Login Screen, Site Status Pages, and Website Mode modules. Clone your look and style settings and load up your images all in a few clicks.
The importer also regenerates your log DB error and site status files after an import so you get all the fresh looks without sharing the information.
By default, WordPress uses the PHP Mail function to send emails. That is not great, especially for sites that are scaling up. With Branda, you can use SMTP to send your messages including sending from a 3rd-party mail provider.
If your system emails keep ending up in the spam folder then you definitely need to check this feature out.
Again, this option is not new to Branda, but she did get smarter. In 3.1, Branda checks for other SMTP plugins on your site, notifies you of conflicts, and can even import SMTP settings from other popular tools.
Consolidate with Branda and she’ll take care of the set up.
Don’t really need to spend too much time here, but the the best white label plugin for WordPress got the WPMU DEV Hero Hider. This has become a favorite for our members. Basically, instead of displaying WPMU DEV branding and hero graphics you can replace them with your own… now including Branda.
Put Branda in stealth mode and remove WPMU DEV images or display your own logo where Branda sits in the dashboard. Groovy!
Those are just the highlights. Branda 3.1 is stacked with over 25 additions, upgrades, and improvements including a bunch of cool little styling options, a custom CSS field for the author box, and the ability to hide custom menus for mobile users.
Branda is brilliant and just keeps getting better. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Start using Branda and all the WPMU DEV plugins, services and support absolutely free. Cancel anytime in the next 30-days, you won’t be charged, and we’ll let you keep Branda.
Email Notifications in Google Forms, by default, are sent on behalf of the email address of the Google Account that owns the Google Form. For instance, if my Gmail email address is forms@google.com and I create a new Google Form, the sender’s email in the outgoing message will be listed as forms@google.com.
You can, however, use an alternative email address as the default sender for your Google Forms emails.
This is particularly useful in organizations where the person managing the form is not the same as the person who owns the form. Or if you have created your Google Form under your personal Google Account but would like to send emails on behalf of your work email.
To get started, go to your Gmail account, choose Settings, Accounts and choose “Add another email address” in the “Send Mail As” section.
Here enter your name and the alternate email address that you would like to send the Google Forms emails from. Make sure the “Treat as alias” option is checked else the Gmail API may not treat the new email as a valid alias of your account.
On the next screen, enter the details of the SMTP service and the username and password of that new email account and choose “Add Account.” Google will send an email to verify the ownership of this address. Confirm the email address by logging into the other email account and clicking the link inside the confirmation email.
Next, go to the Google Form, create the email notification and you’ll see the alternate email address as an option in the “Sender’s email address” drop-down.
Please note that Google doesn’t allow you to send emails on behalf of addresses that are not owned by you or have not been verified. You can only send emails from accounts that are set as aliases in your Gmail account.
If you are looking to send email notifications with the sender’s email set the submitter’s email address, that is not possible since only verified aliases are permitted.