Sending email via SMTP is very most popular and effective way for managing users activity on your marketing stretagy. SMTP helps increase email deliverability by using proper authentication. WordPress is having default feature to use PHP Mail function to send emails. We can use any of the popular third party mailing service like Yahoo, Gmail, Outlook, etc for sending emails. They are improving their services to reduce email spam day by day.
For configuring SMTP in wordpress, we need to install WP Mail SMTP plugin. After activating plugin, you will get a new menu under the settings called WP Mail SMTP.
On this WP Mail SMTP page, you will see several configurations to setup third party SMTP detail. Here you can easily choose either default PHP Mail or any third party like sendgrid, gmail etc. whatever you want to connect with wordpress for sending emails and configure detail of that particular third party service credetials like SMTP Host, SMTP Port , Authentication etc.
Here are the required fields which you have to configure in WP Mail SMTP.
For PHP, Gmail, Mailgun, SendGrid
- From Email
Email address from which you want to send emails i.e. email@yourdomain.com - From Name
Name of the sender that your emails will be sent from. - Mailer
By choosing default mode, you would send the messages using the PHP mail function without using SMTP authentication. Gmail, Mailgun and SendGrid options require additional info such as Client ID and Client Secret or API key. - Return Path
This is an option to match the return path for your emails to the sending email.
For other SMTP server:
- SMTP Host
Hostname for your SMTP server. - Encryption
SSL/TLS encryption available for that hostname. - SMTP Port
Port number of your server. - Authentication
This is check of SMTP server requires authentication or not. - Auto TLS
TLS encryption availability on your server. - Username
Username for your SMTP server. - Password
Password for your SMTP server.
These were the parameters for configuring the smtp mail server.