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I don’t have any prior experience with anything tech related but for some reason i decided to give wordpress a go. The video i watched to help me get started used an SMTP Mailer called *php* but i cant see an option for that and all other mailers are asking me for information that i neither understand nor possess.
I want to know two things:
1. What good would an SMTP Mailer do and how important is it if i actually want to work on this website long term?
2. Which one should i use? (and why)
Thanks in advance for any help!
\*SMTP in the title.
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I would use FluentSMTP. I’ve previously used WP SMTP but installed Fluent few days ago and it looks much cleaner and has functions that are only in the pro version of WP SMTP (e.g. message log, etc.). Plus apparently will be free forever. PHP Mail not reliable – lots of emails will not be delivered/blocked if you rely on that so you really do need to set up SMTP.
I’m very happy with Brevo, the SMTp is 100% free and it also comes with other nice free features as a CRM/e-mail marketing platform.
If you ever need that, it’s going to be MUUUCHHH cheaper than Mailchimp or any of the “big names”
PHP mail() is a default PHP function. WordPress uses that to process emails from a website and into an inbox. The reason why many people don’t like the default PHP/Wordpress mail functionality is because emails end a lot on user’s spam/junk folder. That usually happens to due to poorly setup authentication at the DNS level or web hosting blocking the function.
We have been using the default WordPress mail functionality for most brochure sites for many years and rarely have problems. We add the necessary SPF and DMARC records to domain’s DNS and problem solved.
For transactional websites such as those of ecommerce or membership sites, we do recommend the use of an SMTP service. Such as SMTP2Go, as it is very affordable.
An SMTP service basically guarantees 100% email deliverability as they relay the email from the WordPress site and into the users inbox.
Setting up a domain to be used in an external SMTP service still requires you to add SPF, DMARC, and also DKIM records to the domain’s DNS. Once you setup a domain in one of the many SMTP services (SMTP2go, mailgun, brevo, etc) out there you would be provided credentials and configuration settings that you can put into WordPress using one of the thousands of existing SMTP plugins.
Here is an analogy for you to understand this better. When you want to mail a package/letter to someone, you might take it to USPS. You know it might take long but the package will eventually make it to its destination. That’s the default mail function.
In the other hand, if you want to make sure that you package arrived as quick as possible and it guarantee that it will be delivered, you drop it at UPS/Fedex. It’ll cost you more money but you know it will get there faster. That’s what an SMTP service is.
Hope this info helps.
We use WP SMTP with SendGrid. Since we use it on all of our client sites we don’t use the free tier, but we build it into the cost of support. On our busiest sites it works out to be a few dollars a month.
Use FluentSMTP. Free version is good. This way mail won’t go to the spam folder.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/fluent-smtp/
SMTP means that it uses a real email address to send emails
If you use an email that doesn’t exist, when people reply to your email they get an error and you get nothing
Think of SMTP Mailer as a ‘Postman’, it’ll deliver (email) you any form submission or interaction done on your website.
*Fluent SMTP is fairly simpler to use.
Long and short is if your mail ends up in spam because emails are sent from your web server, then an SMTP mailer than can help validate the emails origin.
It can get a bit technical for sure – but basically that’s it, emails need to be “signed” to ensure they aren’t spam.
First thing first, what do you need smtp mailer on your site for?