WordPress uses PHPMailer to send its email by default. But if you ever choose to use a third-party email service, you will need to use SMTP to send email from your WordPress site. In this article, I will show you how you can configure SMTP to send email from a site hosted on SiteGround.
In order to get started with SMTP Configuration, first you need to install a plugin named SMTP Mailer just like any other WordPress plugin.
Once the plugin is installed and activated, a new menu – “SMTP Mailer” will show up under the Settings section. You will need to navigate to it in order to configure WordPress to work with SMTP.
On the settings screen you will see options related to your SMTP configuration:
Here’s how you can configure it:
SMTP Host – The hostname for your SMTP server. For example: smtp.gmail.com, smtp.mail.yahoo.com.
SMTP Authentication – check if you want to use SMTP authentication when sending email (“True” is Recommended).
SMTP Username – The username for your SMTP server. For example: “johndoe” If your gmail address is johndoe@gmail.com.
SMTP Password – The password for your SMTP server (SMTP Mailer encrypts the password when it’s saved in the database).
Type of Encryption – No Encryption/TLS/SSL (SSL is recommended for SiteGround).
SMTP Port – The port to be used by the server to send email (465 is recommended for SiteGround).
- 25 – The default SMTP port If connection is non-encrypted.
- 2525 – If connection is non-encrypted (For non-encrypted connection, SiteGround recommends 2525 instead of 25 because the default 25 might be blocked by your local ISP while 2525 is opened on all SiteGround servers).
- 587 – The default SMTP port If you select “TLS” on an encrypted connection.
- 465 – If “SSL” on an encrypted connection.
From Email Address – If there is no “From Email Address” when a mail is sent, SMTP Mailer will apply this email address.
Please note that Gmail doesn’t allow you to override this address for security reasons.
From Name – The name that your emails will be received from. If there is no “From Name” when a mail is sent, SMTP Mailer will apply this name.
Once you configure these options, simply click the “Save Changes” button at the bottom of the page. That’s it, WordPress is now configured to work with your SMTP Server!
You can even send a test mail from the “Test Email” tab to make sure that everything is working as expected.