Question

Easiest Way to Send Outgoing Email Only

Posted on January 9, 2017
CMS LEMP Ubuntu 16.04 Configuration Management PHP Server Optimization
Asked by danfoote104227

I am running a LEMP stack on a server. Setup is going well. I am running into a huge snag with email though. I don’t want or need a fully featured email server. I just need emails that originate from Wordpress (PHP mail function) to actually send to their appropriate locations, regardless if it’s the same domain or not.

Everything I’m finding on here is so fully featured. Am I missing an obvious solution that would work for me? Thanks you for your time.

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Jonathan Tittle • January 9, 2017

Accepted Answer

@danfoote104227

If you don’t need the full functionality of a mail server, or if you don’t want to bother with the hassle (as running your own can be very time consuming depending on your mail load), services such as Mailgun and SendGrid exists to offload the burden by using an API.

Plugins for both exists for WordPress and work very well. When I was using WordPress, I used one or the other quite often.

SendGrid: https://wordpress.org/plugins/sendgrid-email-delivery-simplified/

MailGun: https://wordpress.org/plugins/mailgun/

You don’t need a working knowledge of the API. The plugin will handle the API calls for you. All you’d need to do is install one of the plugins, sign up for one of the services, add an e-mail address for it to use and then enter the API details in to the plugin configuration.

This would be the best route to take unless you need a more detailed configuration or setup.

While the plugin won’t handle it, it is possible to also work with Mailgun’s API and send & receive e-mail. I’ve written test PHP scripts to connect, send, and receive using their API, so it is possible to use Mailgun to service pretty much all your needs as well.

alexdo

Site Moderator

• October 24, 2021

Hello all,

What I could suggest here is using an SMTP plugin for your WordPress site.

That way you will be able to specify an SMTP server with authentication which your emails would be going through. You could for example use Gmail’s SMTP settings. This would drastically increase the delivery rate of your emails as well compared to using plain PHP mail.

I’ve been using this plugin for a while now and it works very well: Easy WP SMTP

Hope that this helps! Regards, Alex

danfoote104227 • January 9, 2017

These are both perfect thank you! I now have a bit of research to do!