How to Setup WordPress SMTP Relay

Website generated email delivery from submit forms has changed drastically over the last 20 years. Server generated email is no longer acceptable. All websites need to have some type of SMTP email delivery setup. WordPress SMTP Relay is necessary in order to improve your email deliverability.

Why do you need WordPress SMTP Relay?

• More secure. Server generated email can be hacked and exploited by hackers and spammers to send thousands of emails via your server. Most web servers have server generated email disabled.
• Improve email deliverability. You need reliable email delivery from your website. Transactional emails need to get delivered to customers. Sales inquiry emails need to get delivered to businesses.
• Logging. It is really hard to troubleshoot an email delivery problem without email logs. Setting up an SMTP relay system will enable you to view email logs and find email issues.
• Recent changes for DMARC records, SPF records and DKIM records. Internet Service providers are requiring more secure email. Your email will be blocked if it does not follow best practices of email delivery.

WP Mail SMTP Plugin

There are a lot of different plugins and methods to setup SMTP relay in WordPress. The plugin that we like the best is WP Mail SMTP. Our web design team has installed and configured WP Mail SMTP on over 100 WordPress websites over the last couple of years. This plugin has been dependable and it is kept up to date. The free version works great for most use cases. The pro version includes email logs. For E-Commerce websites and transactional emails we recommend the pro version for the better logging. You can find order emails that fail and re delivery them to the customer.

WP Mail SMTP has several methods available to setup your SMTP relay. We use Mailgun most often. Mailgun is included in the free plugin. Office 365 / Outlook, SendGrid, Zoho Mail and Other SMTP are all good options. Office 365 / Outlook is a pro feature.

Choose your SMTP relay method you would like to use to deliver your email. Then follow the directions for that type of connection. You will need connection information like API key and sending domain name. The From email address and domain name will need to match your submit form. You can’t use one email domain for setting up SMTP relay and have your submit forms come From a different domain. That can be seen as Domain Spoofing and look like Spam. Best practice is to use the same domain and email address for SMTP Relay and the From email address on the submit forms.

Once you have your SMTP relay connection setup you can test your configuration. Under WP Mail SMTP < Tools there is an option to Send a Test Email. If it fails you will see debug information about why it failed.

How to Setup Mailgun SMTP Relay

Mailgun is email delivery as a service. It is a paid service to deliver your website email. But there is a Free option for smaller websites. You can send up to 5,000 emails a month for free. With limited logs and features. For our web hosting clients, we use a pro paid account to deliver our clients website emails. Logs are very helpful for troubleshooting email issues. IDP is able to easily troubleshoot website email issues because we have email logs available in both WP SMTP Mailer Pro and in Mailgun Pro account. It is easy to look at the email logs and find emails that fail, and analyze why they failed.

In order to route email thru Mailgun you will need to setup an email domain. For most of our clients we use a generic email domain that we have setup for WordPress email delivery. For our E-Commerce web design clients we setup a custom email sending domain for each website. You will need access to DNS records in order to setup your domain and configure an SPF record, DKIM record, MX records and CName record. Normally you would want to setup a different domain than your company email domain. For example. instead of using mydomain.com for email delivery, you would setup a new sub domain for this purpose. mg.mydomain.com for example. Mailgun will then generate the records you need to setup.

Do You Need Help Setting up WordPress Email Relay?

Contact IDP web design! We would be happy to help you connect your website to an SMTP relay service. IDP has 20 plus years experience setting up website submit forms, E-Commerce, Contact Form 7 and WordPress email delivery for our clients. We can do it quickly and easily.