First of all, an SMTP server is the machine that delivers the emails you send with a mail client. And any free email provider comes with an associated free SMTP server which takes care right of its delivery process: Gmail, for instance, uses gmail.smtp.com. Now the main problem with a common free SMTP provider is that.

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Prerequisites: Office 365 or Microsoft 365 subscription, Exchange Online Plan

This article explains how you can send email from devices and business applications when all of your mailboxes are in Office 365. For example:

• You have a scanner, and you want to email scanned documents to yourself or someone else.

• You have a line-of-business (LOB) application that manages appointments, and you want to email reminders to clients of their appointment time.

Option 1 (recommended): Authenticate your device or application directly with an Office 365 mailbox, and send mail using SMTP AUTH client submission

Note

This option is not compatible with Microsoft Security Defaults or multi-factor authentication (MFA). If your environment uses Microsoft Security Defaults or MFA, we recommend using Option 2 or 3 below.

You must also verify that SMTP AUTH is enabled for the mailbox being used. See Enable or disable authenticated client SMTP submission (SMTP AUTH) in Exchange Online for more information.

This option supports most usage scenarios and it's the easiest to set up. Choose this option when:

• You want to send email from a third-party hosted application, service, or device.

• You want to send email to people inside and outside your organization.

To configure your device or application, connect directly to Office 365 using the SMTP AUTH client submission endpoint smtp.office365.com.

Each device or application must be able to authenticate with Office 365. The email address of the account that's used to authenticate with Office 365 will appear as the sender of messages from the device or application.

How to set up SMTP AUTH client submission

Enter the following settings directly on your device or in the application as their guide instructs (it might use different terminology than this article). As long as your scenario meets the requirements for SMTP AUTH client submission, the following settings will enable you to send email from your device or application.

Device or Application setting	Value
Server/smart host	smtp.office365.com
Port	Port 587 (recommended) or port 25
TLS/StartTLS	Enabled
Username/email address and password	Enter the sign in credentials of the hosted mailbox being used

TLS and other encryption options

Determine what version of TLS your device supports by checking the device guide or with the vendor. If your device or application does not support TLS 1.2 or above:

• Use direct send (Option 2) or Office 365 SMTP relay (Option 3) for sending mail instead (depending on your requirements).

• Use an on-premises Exchange server (or another SMTP email server) if your device is unable to meet the previous requirements for connecting to Office 365. In fact, you might find it easier to manage multiple devices and applications that send email messages in an on-premises Exchange server instead of connecting them all to Office 365 directly. The Exchange server would relay messages in the same way that a device would use Office 365 to relay messages using Option 3 below. You can find out more about configuring your own email server to send emails to Office 365 here: Set up connectors to route mail between Office 365 and your own email servers.

Note

If your device recommends or defaults to port 465, it does not support SMTP AUTH client submission.

How SMTP AUTH client submission works

The following diagram gives you a conceptual overview of what you're environment will look like.

Features of SMTP AUTH client submission

• SMTP AUTH client submission allows you to send email to people in your organization as well as outside your company.

• This method bypasses most spam checks for email sent to people in your organization. This can help protect your company IP addresses from being blocked by a spam list.

• With this method, you can send email from any location or IP address, including your (on-premises) organization's network, or a third-party cloud hosting service, like Microsoft Azure.

Requirements for SMTP AUTH client submission

• Authentication: You must be able to configure a user name and password to send email on the device. Note that you cannot use Microsoft Security Defaults or multi-factor authentication (MFA), which disable basic authentication and are designed to protect your users from compromise. If your environment uses Microsoft Security Defaults or MFA, we recommend using Option 2 or 3 below.

• Mailbox: You must have a licensed Office 365 mailbox to send email from.

• Transport Layer Security (TLS): Your device must be able to use TLS version 1.2 and above.

• Port: Port 587 (recommended) or port 25 is required and must be unblocked on your network. Some network firewalls or ISPs block ports, especially port 25.

• DNS: You must use the DNS name smtp.office365.com. Do not use an IP address for the Office 365 server, as IP Addresses are not supported.

Note

For information about TLS, see How Exchange Online uses TLS to secure email connections in Office 365 and for detailed technical information about how Exchange Online uses TLS with cipher suite ordering, see Enhancing mail flow security for Exchange Online.

Limitations of SMTP AUTH client submission

You can only send from one email address unless your device can store login credentials for multiple Office 365 mailboxes. Office 365 imposes a limit of 30 messages sent per minute, and a limit of 10,000 recipients per day.

Option 2: Send mail directly from your printer or application to Office 365 (direct send)

Choose this option when:

• Your environment uses Microsoft Security Defaults or multi-factor authentication (MFA).

• SMTP client submission (Option 1) is not compatible with your business needs or with your device.

• You only need to send messages to recipients in your own organization who have mailboxes in Office 365; you don't need to send email to people outside of your organization.

Other scenarios when direct send may be your best choice:

• You want your device or application to send from each user's email address and do not want each user's mailbox credentials configured to use SMTP client submission. Direct send allows each user in your organization to send email using their own address.

  Avoid using a single mailbox with Send As permissions for all your users. This method is not supported because of complexity and potential issues.

• You want to send bulk email or newsletters. Office 365 does not allow you to do this via SMTP client submission. Direct send allows you to send a high volume of messages.

  Note that there is a risk of your email being marked as spam by Office 365. You might want to enlist the help of a bulk email provider to assist you. For example, they'll help you adhere to best practices, and can help ensure that your domains and IP addresses are not blocked by others on the internet.

Settings for direct send

Enter the following settings on the device or in the application directly.

Device or application setting	Value
Server/smart host	Your MX endpoint, for example, contoso-com.mail.protection.outlook.com
Port	Port 25
TLS/StartTLS	Enabled
Email address	Any email address for one of your Office 365 accepted domains. This email address does not need to have a mailbox.

We recommend adding an SPF record to avoid having messages flagged as spam. If you are sending from a static IP address, add it to your SPF record in your domain registrar's DNS settings as follows:

DNS entry	Value
SPF	v=spf1 ip4:<Static IP Address> include:spf.protection.outlook.com ~all

Step-by-step instructions for direct send

1. If your device or application can send from a static public IP address, obtain this IP address and make a note of it. You can share your static IP address with other devices and users, but don't share the IP address with anyone outside of your company. Your device or application can send from a dynamic or shared IP address but messages are more prone to antispam filtering.

2. Sign in to Office 365.

3. Make sure your domain (for example, contoso.com) is selected. Click Manage DNS, and find the MX record. The MX record will have a POINTS TO ADDRESS value that looks similar to contoso-com.mail.protection.outlook.com, as depicted in the following screenshot. Make a note of the MX record POINTS TO ADDRESS value, which we refer to as your MX endpoint.

4. Go back to the device, and in the settings, under what would normally be called Server or Smart Host, enter the MX record POINTS TO ADDRESS value you recorded in step 3.

   Dawn of war models download. Note

   Do NOT use an IP address for the Office 365 server connection, as IP addresses are not supported.

5. Now that you are done configuring your device settings, go to your domain registrar's website to update your DNS records. Edit your sender policy framework (SPF) record. In the entry, include the IP address that you noted in step 1. The finished string looks similar to this:

   v=spf1 ip4:10.5.3.2 include:spf.protection.outlook.com ~all

   where 10.5.3.2 is your public IP address.

   Note

   Skipping this step might cause email to be sent to recipients' junk mail folders.

6. To test the configuration, send a test email from your device or application, and confirm that the recipient received it.

How direct send works

In the following diagram, the application or device in your organization's network uses direct send and your Office 365 mail exchange (MX) endpoint to email recipients in your organization. It's easy to find your MX endpoint in Office 365 if you need to look it up.

You can configure your device to send email direct to Office 365. Use direct send to relay email to recipients with Office 365 mailboxes in your organization. Direct send also works for external recipients with mailboxes in Office 365. If your device uses direct send to try to relay an email for a recipient who doesn't have an Office 365 mailbox, the email will be rejected.

Note

If your device or application has the ability to act as a email server to deliver messages to Office 365 as well as other email providers, there are no Office 365 settings needed for this scenario. Consult your device or application instructions for more information.

Features of direct send

• Uses Office 365 to send emails, but does not require a dedicated Office 365 mailbox.

• Doesn't require your device or application to have a static IP address. However, this is recommended if possible.

• Doesn't work with a connector; never configure a device to use a connector with direct send, this can cause problems.

• Doesn't require your device to support TLS.

Direct send has higher sending limits than SMTP client submission. Senders are not bound by the 30 messages per minute or 10,000 recipients per day limit.

Requirements for direct send

• Port: Port 25 is required and must be unblocked on your network.

• Static IP address is recommended: A static IP address is recommended so that an SPF record can be created for your domain. This helps avoid your messages being flagged as spam.

• Does not require an Office 365 mailbox with a license.

Limitations of direct send

• Direct send cannot be used to deliver email to external recipients, for example, recipients with Yahoo or Gmail addresses.

• Your messages will be subject to antispam checks.

• Sent mail might be disrupted if your IP addresses are blocked by a spam list.

• Office 365 uses throttling policies to protect the performance of the service.

Option 3: Configure a connector to send mail using Office 365 SMTP relay

This option is more difficult to implement than the others. Only choose this option when:

• Your environment uses Microsoft Security Defaults or multi-factor authentication (MFA).

• SMTP client submission (Option 1) is not compatible with your business needs or with your device

• You can't use direct send (Option 2) because you must send email to external recipients.

SMTP relay lets Office 365 relay emails on your behalf by using a connector that's configured with your public IP address or a TLS certificate. Setting up a connector makes this a more complicated option.

Settings for Office 365 SMTP relay

Device or application setting	Value
Server/smart host	Your MX endpoint, e.g. yourdomain-com.mail.protection.outlook.com
Port	Port 25
TLS/StartTLS	Enabled
Email address	Any email address in one of your Office 365 verified domains. This email address does not need a mailbox.

If you already have a connector that's configured to deliver messages from your on-premises organization to Office 365 (for example, a hybrid environment), you probably don't need to create a dedicated connector for Office 365 SMTP relay. If you need to create a connector, use the following settings to support this scenario:

Connector setting	Value
From	Your organization's email server
To	Office 365
Domain restrictions: IP address/range	Your on-premises IP address or address range that the device or application will use to connect to Office 365

We recommend adding an SPF record to avoid having messages flagged as spam. If you are sending from a static IP address, add it to your SPF record in your domain registrar's DNS settings as follows:

DNS entry	Value
SPF	v=spf1 ip4:<Static IP Address> include:spf.protection.outlook.com ~all

Step-by-step configuration instructions for SMTP relay

1. Obtain the public (static) IP address that the device or application with send from. A dynamic IP address isn't supported or allowed. You can share your static IP address with other devices and users, but don't share the IP address with anyone outside of your company. Make a note of this IP address for later.

2. Sign in to Office 365.

3. Select Domains. Make sure your domain, such as contoso.com, is selected. Click Manage DNS and find the MX record. The MX record will have a POINTS TO ADDRESS value that looks similar to cohowineinc-com.mail.protection.outlook.com as depicted in the following screenshot. Make a note of the MX record POINTS TO ADDRESS value. You'll need this later.

4. Check that the domains that the application or device will send to have been verified. If the domain is not verified, emails could be lost, and you won't be able to track them with the Exchange Online message trace tool.

5. In Office 365, click Admin, and then click Exchange to go to the Exchange admin center.

6. In the Exchange admin center, go to Mail flow > Connectors.

7. Check the list of connectors set up for your organization. If there is no connector listed from your organization's email server to Office 365, create one:

   1. To start the wizard, click the plus symbol +. On the first screen, choose the options that are depicted in the following screenshot:

      Click Next, and give the connector a name.

   2. On the next screen, choose the option By verifying that the IP address of the sending server matches one of these IP addresses that belong to your organization, and add the IP address from step 1.

   3. Leave all the other fields with their default values, and select Save.

8. Now that you are done with configuring your Office 365 settings, go to your domain registrar's website to update your DNS records. Edit your SPF record. Include the IP address that you noted in step 1. The finished string should look similar to this v=spf1 ip4:10.5.3.2 include:spf.protection.outlook.com ~all, where 10.5.3.2 is your public IP address. Skipping this step can cause email to be sent to recipients' junk mail folders.

9. Now, go back to the device, and in the settings, find the entry for Server or Smart Host, and enter the MX record POINTS TO ADDRESS value that you recorded in step 3.

10. To test the configuration, send a test email from your device or application, and confirm that it was received by the recipient.

Configure a certificate-based connector to relay email through Microsoft 365 or Office 365

If your devices or applications are capable of using a certificate for mail flow, you can configure a certificate-based connector to relay email through Microsoft 365 or Office 365.

To do this, verify the subject name on the certificate used by the sending device or application. The common name (CN) or subject alternative name (SAN) in the certificate should contain a domain name that you have registered in Microsoft 365 or Office 365. Also, you must create a certificate-based connector in Microsoft 365 or Office 365 with this same domain name to accept and relay emails coming from these devices, applications, or any other on-premises server. For more information about this method, see important notice for email customers who have configured connectors.

How Office 365 SMTP relay works

In the following diagram, the application or device in your organization's network uses a connector for SMTP relay to email recipients in your organization.

• The Office 365 connector that you configure authenticates your device or application with Office 365 using an IP address. Your device or application can send email using any address (including ones that can't receive mail), as long as the address uses one of your domains. The email address doesn't need to be associated with an actual mailbox. For example, if your domain is contoso.com, you could send from an address like do_not_reply@contoso.com.

• Office 365 SMTP relay uses a connector to authenticate the mail sent from your device or application. This allows Office 365 to relay those messages to your own mailboxes as well as external recipients. Office 365 SMTP relay is very similar to direct send except that it can send mail to external recipients.

• Due to the added complexity of configuring a connector, direct send is recommended over Office 365 SMTP relay, unless you must send email to external recipients. To send email using Office 365 SMTP relay, your device or application server must have a static IP address or address range. You can't use SMTP relay to send email directly to Office 365 from a third-party hosted service, such as Microsoft Azure.

Features of Office 365 SMTP relay

• Office 365 SMTP relay does not require the use of a licensed Office 365 mailbox to send emails.

• Office 365 SMTP relay has higher sending limits than SMTP client submission; senders are not bound by the 30 messages per minute or 10,000 recipients per day limits.

Requirements for Office 365 SMTP relay

• Static IP address or address range: Most devices or applications are unable to use a certificate for authentication. To authenticate your device or application, use one or more static IP addresses that are not shared with another organization.

• Connector: You must set up a connector in Exchange Online for email sent from your device or application.

• Port: Port 25 is required and must not be blocked on your network or by your ISP.

• Licensing: SMTP relay doesn't use a specific Office 365 mailbox to send email. This means that users must have their own licenses if they send email from devices or applications that are configured for SMTP relay. Ben 10 omniverse watch online. If you have senders who use a device or LOB application and those senders do not have Office 365 mailbox licenses, obtain and assign an Exchange Online Protection license to each unlicensed sender. This is the least expensive license that allows you to send email via Office 365.

Limitations of Office 365 SMTP relay

• Sent mail can be disrupted if your IP addresses are blocked by a spam list.

• Reasonable limits are imposed for sending. For more information, see Higher Risk Delivery Pool for Outbound Messages.

• Requires static unshared IP addresses (unless a certificate is used).

Compare the options

Here's a comparison of each configuration option and the features they support.

SMTP client submission	Direct send	SMTP relay
Features
Send to recipients in your domain(s)	Yes	Yes	Yes
Relay to internet via Office 365	Yes	No. Direct delivery only.	Yes
Bypasses antispam	Yes, if the mail is destined for one of your Office 365 mailboxes.	No. Suspicious emails might be filtered. We recommend a custom Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record.	No. Suspicious emails might be filtered. We recommend a custom SPF record.
Supports mail sent from applications hosted by a third party	Yes	Yes. We recommend updating your SPF record to allow the third party to send as your domain.	No
Saves to Sent Items folder	Yes	No	No
Requirements
Open network port	Port 587 or port 25	Port 25	Port 25
Device or application server must support TLS	Required	Optional	Optional
Requires authentication	Office 365 user name and password required	None	One or more static IP addresses. Your printer or the server running your LOB app must have a static IP address to use for authentication with Office 365.
Limitations
Throttling limits	10,000 recipients per day. 30 messages per minute.	Standard throttling is in place to protect Office 365.	Reasonable limits are imposed. The service can't be used to send spam or bulk mail. For more information about reasonable limits, see Higher Risk Delivery Pool for Outbound Messages.

Use your own email server to send email from multifunction devices and applications

If you happen to have an on-premises email server, you should seriously consider using that server for SMTP relay instead of Office 365. A local email server that you have physical access to is much easier to configure for SMTP relay by devices and applications on your local network. The details about how to do this depend on your on-premises email server. For Exchange Server, see the following topics:

Related Topics

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.

Why You Need an SMTP Service Provider for WordPress Emails?

All WordPress websites rely heavily on email to do various tasks. For example:

• Registering a new account
• Notifications for comments, new articles, password changes, and more
• If its an online store, then sending customers order confirmation, invoices, and delivery information via email.

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.

Best SMTP Service Providers

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.

1. SendinBlue

SendinBlue is the best 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.

2. Mailgun

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.

3. SendGrid

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.

4. Amazon SES

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.

5. G Suite

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.

6. Postmark

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.

7. Office365

Office365 formerly known as Outlook is a popular email and productivity suite by Microsoft.

Similar to G Suite, Office365 allows you to create a professional email address for your business. You can also use Microsoft’s SMTP servers to send out emails from your WordPress site as long as you’re a small business.

The business version of Office365 allows you to send up to 10,000 emails per day, but this is combined with your regular emails. We only recommend this if you want reliable emails for your small business website.

You can easily connect Office365 to WordPress using WP Mail SMTP plugin.

For larger membership sites or eCommerce stores, you want to use other SMTP providers in our list above.

Which is the Best SMTP Service Provider?

Aside from the top SMTP providers that we mentioned above, there are literally dozens of others like Mandrill, Mailjet, 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 and Office365, 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 our top two SMTP recommendation: SendinBlue, and Mailgun.

However as your website grows, pricing becomes a pretty big factor. SendinBlue offers the most competitive pricing with scalability and most importantly reliable technical support.

For example, if you’re sending 120,000 emails per month, you will pay $66 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 120,000 emails per month will only cost $12 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: SendinBlue.

Our pick for best SMTP providers for large business and eCommerce websites: Amazon SES.

How to Easily Connect Your SMTP Service to WordPress

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.

• SMTP Host: You smtp host address which usually looks like this smtp.yoursmtpserver.com
• Encryption: Usually it is either SSL or TLS
• SMTP Port: Usually it is 465
• Authentication: Turn on authentication
• Username: Username provided by your SMTP service usually it is your email address.
• Password: Password for your SMTP service

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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