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I am curious to know if I have my email records set up correctly, such as DKMI or whatever those records are. If I set them up correctly, will I still need to use and mail plugin for smtp to be able to receive hundreds of forms submissions ?
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Generally if your dns is set up correctly you don’t need to use a third party smtp service.
Some hosts impose limitations, and shared hosting is notorious for having the IP address blacklisted due to abuse / clueless users whose sites get hacked and used as bot farms.
A lot of servers either cap the daily amount of mails or disable SMTP all together. So it’s generally advised to use an external provider. There are free SMTP plugins out there, too.
I can confirm that I have all of the proper email DNS setup correctly along with SPF, DMARC, DKIM, TLS, MTA-STS, you get the point the whole freakin’ shabang. I was still having problems with WordPress sending the auto emails from the site itself, like anything that is supposed to go to my admin email or form fill outs, so that is why I setup an external email service and it worked instantly.
Anyone that has said no to this question has just gotten lucky. The answer is yes, you need to use SMTP. WP default PHP mailer is unreliable. [https://getshieldsecurity.com/blog/wordpress-email-deliverability/](https://getshieldsecurity.com/blog/wordpress-email-deliverability/) There is no reason not to use an SMTP plugin with your setup, if it is done correctly, or use a third party service.
You will need to set up your DNS correctly whatever gateway you use to send mail from your domain. Using an external service (ie not on your web server) is a good idea for many reasons, and as it is possible to do this at very low cost there is little reason not to do so.
The main advantage is not having to maintain and manage a mail server. Also there is the risk of getting your mail server blacklisted, which will happen sooner or later. If you use an external service this risk is handled for you. If you don’t, and your business depends on email coming from your server, you might be in a for a bad time.