There are many actions that take place on your website that initiate an email delivery. Whether it’s a person filling up your contact form or placing a product order, you expect to receive information about it directly to your inbox.
If you have a WordPress website, you might run into issues that will cause your website to not send emails properly. This can be an issue if you rely on email updates to run your website and online business properly.
There is a reason why WordPress emails often run into issues, and there’s an obvious solution to this problem.
In this article, we’ll discuss how you can easily fix WordPress email delivery issues.
Read: Common WordPress errors that can crash your website
The PHP(mail) function: How does WordPress normally deliver emails?
The PHP(mail) function is a native WordPress feature that’s designed to manage and deliver emails triggered on your WordPress site. Anytime someone fills a contact form, places an order, or subscribes to your email list, WordPress uses the default PHP(mail) function to deliver emails to the required recipients.
Sounds good, right?
Not quite. Many hosting providers are not configured to be compatible with the PHP(mail) function. In addition, email service providers like Gmail tend to mark WordPress emails (sent via PHP(mail) function) as spam.
This happens because spam testing tools are able to detect if an email is actually coming from the original sender. WordPress emails fail to pass these testing tools and get lumped into the spam folder. The PHP(mail) function lacks the authentication features needed to deliver emails properly.
The solution is to avoid using the PHP(mail) function and to instead work with an SMTP service.
What is SMTP?
Short for Sending Mail Transfer Protocol, SMTP is the industry standard for sending website emails. Almost every major website uses SMTP services for email delivery.
Unlike the PHP(mail) function, SMTP meets the necessary criteria for proper email delivery. It’s not an in-built part of WordPress, which means you’re required to first sign up for an SMTP service, and then configure it with your WordPress website.
There are many SMTP services available for website owners. SendinBlue allows users to sign up and not pay for up to 300 emails a day. If your website emails tend to exceed this number, you can sign up for a higher plan too.
In the next section, we’ll discuss how to configure your SMTP service with your website.
How to configure an SMTP service with your WordPress site?
WordPress doesn’t offer SMTP configuration natively. You’re required to install a plugin in order to integrate your SMTP service with the WordPress website.
In some cases, the website host you’re working with already offers SMTP services. Siteground is one such website host that provides ample email services that enable you to set up your website’s SMTP settings properly.
In case you don’t have a website host that offers SMTP services, you can choose to sign up for a dedicated email service provider. You can also use your Gmail account to send emails via SMTP.
The following steps explain how to configure your SMTP service with your WordPress site:
- Install and activate the WP Mail SMTP plugin.
- Navigate to WP Mail SMTP > Settings via the left menu from your WordPress admin panel.
- Enter the From email and From name in their respective fields. It is a good practice to ensure that the From email you enter is the same that you’ve used to set up an SMTP service.
- Enter the mailer you’ve set up your SMTP settings with. If you don’t find your SMTP service listed, choose Other SMTP.
- Based on your choice of mailer, you will have to enter a few details to integrate your SMTP service and website.
- Once you enter the details required, save your settings and try sending a test email. You can do this via the Email test tab on the screen’s navigation.
- You will receive a test email from WP Mail verifying that your website’s emails are working. You should then start receiving emails triggered on your website.
How can email deliverability affect your AppMySite app?
Using AppMySite to create a mobile app for your WordPress website? Email deliverability can become a problem if your app customers are placing orders on your app, and not receiving email updates.
This can harm user experience and cause issues with customer support in the long run.
If your emails are working properly, customers placing orders on your website will receive regular updates via email. In addition, other emails associated with app sign up, forgot password, and reset password should also be delivered properly.
Email deliverability is crucial in making sure your app customers are able to get regular updates.
In conclusion
It is vital to make sure your WordPress website is able to deliver emails properly. PHP(mail), the default WordPress mailing feature, is not the ideal solution to send emails via your website. Setting up an SMTP service is standard industry practice and you can make sure you’re getting it as part of your hosting package.
This article shows how to fix WordPress email deliverability issues by integrating an SMTP service with your website.
If you don’t want to budget an additional SMTP service, you can always set up a free Gmail account in your SMTP settings. It is however recommended that you sign up for an SMTP service if your hosting provider doesn’t offer it.
