Configure SMTP access for WordPress

Note: The email account that you create does not need to receive mail and there is no requirement for mail to be serviced by cPanel either. The account is only used for authentication – adjust your ‘From Email’ to something that you can receive.

WordPress by default will use PHPMail to send emails, however the way in which these emails are sent no longer qualifies as best practice due to the every increasing levels of email spam. As such mail providers have begun to implement rules based on the manner in which the email was sent, often mail sent via PHPMail can be classified as junk and filtered accordingly once it reaches the destination.

To avoid this unfortunate situation we recommend instead configuring an SMTP service for WordPress to use, and by doing so all mail sent by the website will then use this mechanism instead. As a bonus you have more control over the way in which email is delivered, and setup is very easy.

The video below walks you through the process of:

  • cPanel
    1. Logging into your service through wphosting.com.au
    2. Finding the service and navigating to cPanel
    3. Creating an email account
  • WordPress
    1. Logging into WordPress
    2. Installing a plugin – we use WP Mail SMTP by WPForms
    3. Configuring the plugin
    4. Testing

You can choose to use a different plugin if you would like, but the plugin we’ve used continues to be reliable and performs well.

The same settings will work in other plugins as well, adjust your application according to your specific needs.

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