The way people used to communicate has changed. Nowadays email is considered one of the most trusted ways of communication for business. This is where WordPress SMTP plugins come into play.
When it comes to website and users’ communication email stands still. An SMTP service provider helps websites send various emails from the website backend to their users. WordPress is designed through PHP and uses the same to send emails by default. SMTP plugins are there to send emails properly.
If you are looking for the best WordPress SMTP plugins then you are in the right place. In this post, I am going to share some of the best service providers in this category with high email deliverability.
So let’s get started.
What is an SMTP Service?
SMTP also called Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is an industry standard for sending and receiving electronic emails using the internet.
It is a type of software used for sending and receiving emails to other computer/server users based on unique e-mail addresses. The main purpose of the SMTP server is used to set up different communication rules between servers.
When you send an email, an SMTP server works in the backend that breaks it down into small relevant parts. It helps the email to move from the sender’s email client to your recipient’s email client.
The servers are configured with built-in programs to perform communication and email delivery. They also have a built-in identification system for handling various errors such as incorrect email addresses.
For example,
If you try to send an email address with the wrong address, then the server checks it first and replies with an error message of some kind.
It uses a high-end authentication algorithm to increase the possibility of emails being delivered to the recipient’s primary inbox and doesn’t end up in the junk mail folder. Most of the emails you found in your inbox these days come from an SMTP server.
Best WordPress SMTP Plugins 2024
There are many WordPress SMTP plugins in the WordPress repository and one can easily get confused. If you just search for this query in the official WordPress website or your website backend plugin section then you would get many results.
Sr. No | Best SMTP Plugin | Download Link |
1. | WP Mail SMTP By WPForms | |
2. | PostMark For WordPress | |
3. | Post SMTP Mailer | |
4. | Easy WP SMTP | |
5. | WP Gmail SMTP | |
6. | WP Offload SES Lite | |
7. | SMTP By Sendinblue | |
8. | WP SMTP | |
9. | SMTP Mailer | |
10. | SAR Friendly SMTP |
That’s why we come up with a list of plugins that allows you to send emails without any hustle. Basically, you would be using SMTP services through these plugins.
1. WP Mail SMTP
It is obvious that any WordPress SMTP plugin list starts with WP Mail SMTP. This plugin is developed by WPForms. WP Mail SMTP is the most popular plugin in this category with more than 2 million active installations.
It is a free WordPress SMTP plugin that allows you to connect your WordPress website to an SMTP server. The plugin was developed to make email deliverability easy and reliable.
Once you set up and configure the wp_mail() function, then it allows you to connect various SMTP services. It includes
- SMTP.com
- Sendinblue SMTP
- Mailgun SMTP
- SendGrid SMTP
- Gmail SMTP
- Microsoft SMTP, and more.
This plugin recommends SMTP.com as they have over 22 years of email delivery expertise. The team behind this plugin takes security very seriously and several options are available that make sure your site is safe and secure.
2. Postmark For WordPress
Postmark is another reliable plugin to send your WordPress-based website emails. Their managed IPs ensure lightning-fast email delivery and no add-on required.
After installing the plugin you need to place your Postmark server API token. For this, you need to have a Postmark account. If you don’t have an account then you can create one for free.
It comes with:
- Beautiful dashboard to track delivery
- Monitor volume,
- Bounces
- Spam complaints
- Deliverability
- Send activity
The setup process is very simple and you can get started after installing the plugin With a free Postmark account, you can send 100 emails per month and it doesn’t expire. If you want more then you can upgrade to paid plans.
3. Post-SMTP Mailer/Email Log
Post-SMTP Mailer is a next-generation WordPress plugin that handles email delivery. Currently, this plugin has over 200,000 active installations on WordPress official repository.
If you’re still sending an email with a WordPress default SMTP server then this plugin will help you out. With OAuth 2.0 there is no need to store your email and password on the WordPress database.
You would get an interactive setup Wizard to eliminate any configuration mistakes. It also comes with the connectivity tester tool to diagnose server issues.
This plugin is compactable with WooCommerce and you can use it for various online shopping emails. The built-in Email Log feature of this plugin is an invaluable resource for in-depth diagnosing problems with emails.
4. Easy WP SMTP
Easy WP SMTP is another popular WordPress SMTP plugin with many awesome features. Currently, this plugin has over 500,000 active installations.
After installing the plugin you need to configure it in the plugin settings. Then you can seamlessly connect your WordPress-based website with a mail server to handle all outgoing emails.
There is always an uphill battle between popular email clients like Gmail, Yahoo, Office 365, and Zoho and email spammers. If the proper configuration and authentication aren’t on the SMTP server, then emails will go in the SPAM folder, or in the worst case, it doesn’t get delivered at all.
You can choose the type of encryption from SSL and TLS. There is also an option to send test emails to see whether it lands in the inbox or not.
5. WP Gmail SMTP
Many shared hosting services have serious limitations on email-sending servers. As the name suggests, the Gmail SMTP plugin allows you to authenticate it with your Google account and send emails via the Gmail SMTP server.
It uses the latest OAuth 2.0 protocol to verify access to the Gmail API. This means you don’t need to enter any username or password to log in.
Before sending emails you need to create a new project in Google Developers Console. Then a Client ID and Client secret would be generated and pasted into the settings area. Once you authorize the Gmail SMTP plugin then it will be able to take control of all outgoing emails.
6. WP Offload SES Lite
WordPress default emails can land in the spam folder and you would never want to happen this. WP Offload SES Lite comes in handy to send emails directly to the inbox.
The step-by-step setup wizard allows you to configure your site to send all emails via Amazon SES. Verify sending domains and email addresses to start the process.
Amazon SES has a max send rate that limits sending emails per second. So the auto-retry option would be there to send undelivered emails. You can view all the stats after login into your Amazon SES account. Send a test email to confirm everything is up and running before enabling site-wide email sending.
7. SMTP By Sendinblue
SMTP by Sendinblue is a powerful all-in-one email marketing plugin for WordPress. Using this plugin you can create beautiful and responsive newsletters.
Sendinblue is another recommended transactional email service provider. Their email deliverability is awesome and experts constantly work on the optimization, reliability, and speed of their SMTP infrastructure. Sendinblue provides users 300 free emails per day.
A real-time report dashboard comes with this plugin gives you advanced insights into deliverability and performance. After installing this plugin the default email sending server is replaced with a Sendinblue SMTP server.
8. WP SMTP
WP SMTP allows you to send emails via SMTP instead of the default PHP function. The setup process is simple and you would find it in the setting section.
You can check the email log to check whether an email has been delivered or failed. If an email is failed to deliver then you can check why it was failed.
All the email credentials can be configured manually. There is also an alert system that sends notifications when emails are unable to deliver.
9. SMTP Mailer
SMTP Mailer is another WordPress SMTP plugin that allows you to configure an SMTP mail server. It will handle all outgoing emails from your WordPress-based website.
The track record shows that the deliverability of this SMTP plugin is quite good. It is compactable with popular contact form plugins like Contact Form 7, Jetpack Contact Form, etc. There is a dropdown to select the encryption between SSL and TLS.
Once you have configured the settings, you can send a test email to check the email functionalities. If everything works fine then you can implement it on the whole website.
10. SAR Friendly SMTP
SAR Friendly SMTP is one of the newest plugins in this category and comes with many useful features. This a unique plugin that won’t use any third-party libraries for SMTP and uses WordPress core.
You need to have WordPress 4.9 or higher version to use this plugin. It uses the WordPress settings API for its settings page and makes it secure by default.
Send a test email to check if WordPress is correctly sending emails using the SMTP server. If anything goes wrong or not working as you want then contact their support team.
Why Do You Need To Have a WordPress SMTP Plugin?
Emails are very important for a website for various purposes. Some occasions like new account creation, password reset, new post publish notification, new offer on an eCommerce site, etc.
When it comes to eCommerce sites then email is like lifeblood. You can’t imagine a life without a proper email-delivering network setup. The same happens with banking services or wallet apps. You are dealing with people’s money and you never want to lose customer trust just because of an undelivered email.
For advanced email marketing campaigns, you need to choose one of the best and most high-quality WordPress SMTP plugin providers. As we have discussed earlier, the WordPress core email-sending system uses PHP language for regular operations.
But you will be surprised after knowing this.
The default email delivery system often sends emails to the spam folder of the recipient. This is because most spam filters (used in popular services like Gmail) will verify the sender’s email, authentication ID, email server details, and many additional details.
Many cheap hosting service providers don’t want to configure their PHP properly, or they’ve disabled the editing option completely to avoid misuse. One can easily send spam emails after injecting malicious codes.
You can avoid all the above problems by using a high-end SMTP server to send your emails through the WordPress dashboard. These service providers use high-end email delivery servers to ensure that all your emails are delivered to the recipient’s inbox.
We have listed many SMTP plugins above and some of them offer free SMTP plans. If you are getting started then the above plans would be enough for you. If you want more email delivery then switch to paid plans anytime in the future. It depends on your budget, website requirements, and the service you want to get.
Things To Watch In A WordPress SMTP Plugin:
When you are out for an SMTP plugin to support your email delivery efforts, follow the below points.
Conclusion
So these are some of the best WordPress SMTP plugins you can use. Emails are very important for various reasons and you should use an SMTP plugin in your WordPress website.
As the default email delivery system is not up to the mark you should use one of the above plugins.