Sending transactional emails from a website may seem straightforward, but beneath the surface lies a complex web of considerations. From email content to deliverability and security, maintaining a seamless communication channel for interactions requires careful planning and the right tools. Explore this intricate world of transactional email delivery.

Why should you use SMTP to send emails from your WordPress site?

In the world of WordPress, it’s essential to understand that without a reliable SMTP server, your email communications may never reach your intended recipients. Let’s dive into the two primary categories of emails you send to your customers:

1. Bulk Emails: These are the messages you send to a broad audience all at once, encompassing email marketing campaigns and promotional materials. Reaching your entire customer base efficiently is crucial for your business’s growth.
2. Transactional Emails: These automated messages are triggered by specific actions taken by your customers. Examples include password reset notifications, order confirmations, legal updates, and more. The speedy and trouble-free delivery of these emails is paramount to ensure smooth customer interactions.

If your website or eCommerce platform relies on the PHP Mail function to send emails, you might encounter some challenges. This method does not guarantee high deliverability and can lead to your messages being marked as spam. Moreover, if you’re using a shared web server, there’s a significant risk of it being flagged as suspicious, which can harm your email sending reputation.

The solution? Embrace the power of an SMTP server tailored for your WordPress site. By doing so, you’ll benefit from robust authentication mechanisms, ensuring that your emails consistently land in your customers’ inboxes. Don’t leave the success of your communication strategy to chance – make the smart choice and employ an SMTP server to boost your email delivery reliability.

How to send emails with SMTP on a WordPress website?

Setting up your WordPress website to use SMTP to send emails is fairly easy. Basically, you can do it by writing functions or by using a plugin, we covered it on WP Expert previously in the article “Two ways to send WordPress emails with SMTP“.

Which SMTP services can you use to send emails with SMTP?

There are plenty of SMTP services available, so you should know what are your needs before you pick one. The most important point to know is the volume of emails sent from your website. For many websites, there will be only transactional emails and contact forms, so the emails volume will be quite low. For membership sites or e-commerce ones, there should be much more emails sent already. Finally, for websites that incorporate a newsletter plugin to send emails, you will probably send even more emails, especially if you have a large email list.

Here are some solutions you could consider for your website:

If you are sending few emails

• Your website’s host: in most cases, your website’s host will also provide you with the email hosting. They should have SMTP settings that allow you to send emails from the host’s own SMTP. However, it is usually capped to a daily or even hourly number of emails you can send, so it’s not appropriate for larger sending volume.
• Google SMTP: Gmail’s SMTP server serves as a handy tool for sending emails via various email clients, using your Gmail address or custom domain. You can leverage this functionality with your free Gmail account, or opt for a Google Workspace account to enjoy a more generous daily email sending quota. The number of emails sent is limited to 500 emails a day (more if you have a Google Workspace account), so it’s not suitable for bigger websites, but will work fine for smaller websites.

If you send more emails

• SendGrid: a versatile marketing and automation platform providing both free and premium SMTP services. With SendGrid, you can harness its relay infrastructure to send emails without the need for your own dedicated server. If you want to test it, SendGrid offers 100 emails a day for free, with the paid plan, you will get more emails at affordable pricing, along with features like email address validation.
• Amazon SES: a product within Amazon Web Services (AWS), which offers a budget-friendly SMTP service that enables you to kickstart your email campaigns within minutes. By leveraging Amazon SES, you tap into Amazon’s robust server infrastructure, ensuring rapid email deliveries and minimal downtime.