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Best way to manage your website’s emails

Most websites send emails, typically from a simple contact form, or a registration function within a members area, or perhaps from an ecommerce solution.

If you’re having problems with sending and receiving emails from your website, using a free SMTP solution can offer improved reliability and deliverability at no cost.

What Is SMTP? Email servers use several protocols, including SMTP, POP3 and IMAP. Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), is a set of communication guidelines used by email servers to deliver emails to their clients. SMTP is used to send emails, so it only works for outgoing emails.

When your website sends an email the default setting is to use the PHP Mail function of your server. These emails originate from a generic email address (eg. yourserverid@yourserver.com) so there is a good chance they will be blocked by the recipient’s firewall or are likely to end up in a users’ spam folder. It is better to use SMTP so that your emails are properly authenticated and they’ll be recognized as legitimate and bypass aggressive spam filters.

SMTP lets you send your site’s emails via a dedicated email server. This means your site can send emails more reliably. There are free SMTP providers (Gmail SMTP, SendGrid, Sendinblue, Mailjet, Mailgun, Amazon…) or you can use your own SMTP server and your email address.

For WordPress websites we use a specific plug-in to configure SMTP and we will ask you for a few details to configure this properly:

  • From Email – the email address you want to send emails from – for example, email@yourdomain.com
  • From Name – the name that your emails will be sent from
  • SMTP Host – the IP or hostname for your SMTP server
  • SMTP Port – the port your server works on
  • Encryption – if you have SSL/TLS encryption
  • Authentication – check if your SMTP server requires authentication
  • Username – the username for your SMTP server
  • Password – the password for your SMTP server

 

We highly recommend enabling this SMTP solution when your website needs to communicate with you or with your visitors.

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