Last updated: 23-May-2021
Ensuring that website-driven emails are properly delivered and received presents a well-documented challenge in WordPress. While I will leave others to discuss the technical reasons for this, I will share that when those website-driven emails go missing, using an SMTP plugin for WordPress and a third party email service can provide the right solution.
Like I did for Gutenberg blocks for WordPress, I recently asked the WordPress community for their recommendations on preferred SMTP plugins for WordPress and third party email services. Since so many folks shared their recommendations and experiences, I wanted to collate their replies in a way that is easier both future me and for others in the WordPress community to access.
Email Services Providers
Postmark
I was delighted to learn about and hear such good things about Postmark, a service from Wildbit, a Philly company. I had heard of Wildbit’s Beanstalk, but not Postmark. That a company as big and well-known as Yoast relies on it is a strong indicator of the quality of Postmark’s service. I really appreciate Taco for flagging that up.
I was very pleased to hear from Naomi Bush about her praise for Postmark. Naomi has a number of software product add-ons for Gravity Forms through her company, gravity+. Naomi’s knowledge and experience of form-driven emails is very valuable to me.
There were more votes of support for Postmark too …
I’ve found https://t.co/aWG055kxzE to be awesome. Easy to setup, great support and awesome, actionable data in their control panel for email issues.
— Sam ? (@sph) April 29, 2021
SendGrid
Lesley Sim of Newsletter Glue shared her positive experience of using SendGrid to make sure that emails sent from WordPress are properly delivered. Given Lesley’s premium WordPress plugin is centered on sending emails from WordPress, her vote for SendGrid was a strong one.
Mailgun
Another service that I named in my original tweet, Mailgun, garnered both positive and negative reviews. Keenan Koppenhaver of Alpha Particle uses it for both clients and his own projects, while as you can read above, Naomi Bush’s experience is less supportive of Mailgun – although Naomi’s feedback may be more focused on Mailgun’s customers than on its services.
Amazon SES
Amazon SES made it into the recommendations, including in one of the first responses to my original tweet. SES stands for Simple Email Service.
I was very interested in reading Lee Shadle’s tweet about how easy it is to connect Amazon SES to WordPress using the WP Mail SMTP plugin.
MailHawk
While I have not heard of MailHawk, I am always happy to hear about new tools and services for WordPress. Shout of thanks to Adrian Tobey for telling me about his product, MailHawk.
Recommendations from Mike Demo
As community-focused developer, Mike Demo shared a couple of recommendations that I want to include. Many thanks to Mike for telling me about both Mandrill, a service from MailChimp, and SMTP.com.
SMTP Plugins
WP SMTP by WP Forms
Again, Lee Shadle shared a lot in his tweet. His recommendation was for WP SMTP by WP Forms, so I have included it here as well.
Post SMTP Mailer/Email Log
On a recent project, the deeply knowledgable and very kind Kevin Cristiano of Tadpole Collective recommended a new-to-me SMTP plugin, Post SMTP Mailer/Email Log. I have since used it on a couple of client sites and find it very useful and very reliable.
Thanks to the WordPress Community
Thanks to everyone who took the time to share their experiences with me on Twitter. Your time and effort to help me learn is part of what makes the people in the WordPress community so wonderful.
If you have additional recommendations, I’ll keep comments open for a bit. Please do share your preferred tools if they are not listed above.
As you come to the end of this post, you might be asking yourself, “Why a photo of bunnies?” To that, I reply the better question is “Why not bunny photos?”