SMTP Mailer Plugin For WordPress

Last updated on by admin

SMTP Mailer is a fully featured SMTP plugin for WordPress. It allows you to configure a SMTP server to send email from your website.

SMTP Plugin Summary

Plugin Name: SMTP Mailer
Compatibility: WordPress 4.6
Version: 1.0.1
Description: Configure a SMTP server to send email from your WordPress site. Configure the wp_mail() function to use SMTP instead of the PHP mail() function.
Icon of SMTP Mailer
Price: 0 USD
Availability: instock
Rating: 5.0 out of 13 votes

SMTP Mailer Installation

You can install the SMTP plugin like any other WordPress plugin.

Option 1 (Quick & Easy install)

  1. Go to Plugins->Add New from your WordPress admin dashboard
  2. Search for SMTP Mailer
  3. Click Install once you have found it

Option 2 (Manual install)

  1. Download the zip version of the plugin
  2. Go to Plugins->Add New
  3. Click Upload Plugin
  4. Select the zip file on your computer
  5. Install it

Option 3 (FTP install)

  1. Download the zip version of the plugin
  2. Extract it on your computer
  3. Connect to your site via FTP
  4. Browse to “/wp-content/uploads/plugins/” directory
  5. Upload the folder that contains the main plugin files

SMTP Mailer Settings

You will need to configure your SMTP server related information in order to send email from your website. In order to access the settings menu go to “Settings->SMTP Mailer” from your admin dashboard.

SMTP Mailer WordPress plugin menu

The settings menu comes with three separate tabs – General Settings, Test Email & Server Info.

General Settings

screenshot of SMTP Mailer plugin settings

SMTP Host

Your outgoing mail server which will be used for sending email (e.g. smtp.gmail.com).

SMTP Authentication

Enable/Disable SMTP authentication when sending an email (Supported values: True/False).

SMTP Username

The username to connect to your SMTP server. You will need to provide a username if you enable “SMTP Authentication”.

SMTP Password

The password to connect to your SMTP server. You will need to provide a password if you enable “SMTP Authentication”.

Type of Encryption

The encryption which will be used for sending an email (Supported values: TLS/SSL/No Encryption. TLS is recommended).

SMTP Port

The port which will be used when sending an email (587/465/25). If you choose TLS the port should be set to 587. For SSL use port 465 instead.

From Email Address

The email address which is be used as the From Address if it is not supplied to the mail function.

From Name

The name which will be used as the From Name if it is not supplied to the mail function.

Test Email

“Test Email” menu allows you to test the functionality of the plugin after you have configured everything.

screenshot of test email menu in the SMTP Mailer plugin

Server Info

“Server Info” menu displays some technical information regarding your server. This is very useful for troubleshooting.

Outgoing Mail Server Configurations

Here are the settings for all the popular outgoing mail (SMTP) servers.

Gmail

  1. SMTP Host: smtp.gmail.com
  2. SMTP Authentication: True
  3. SMTP Username: Either your Gmail account username or full email address
  4. SMTP Password: Your Gmail account’s password
  5. Type of Encryption: TLS or SSL
  6. SMTP Port: 587 (if TLS) or 465 (if SSL)

Troubleshooting

1.For security reasons, Gmail now blocks any incoming connection to its SMTP server. In order to make a connection to the Gmail SMTP server and send email, you will also need to allow less secure apps in your account.

If you do not wish to turn on this feature, you might want to take a look at my Gmail SMTP plugin.

2.When you are sending an email for the first time via SMTP, you might get this SMTP Error: “Could not authenticate“.

In order to fix this issue login to your Gmail account first. You should see a security warning from Gmail upon login – “Your account has been hacked” or “Somebody stole your password”. As soon as you confirm that it was you who tried to login (Just click on the link that shows up in that message), the plugin should be able to connect to the Gmail SMTP server.

Yahoo

  1. SMTP Host: smtp.mail.yahoo.com
  2. SMTP Authentication: True
  3. SMTP Username: Your full Yahoo email address
  4. SMTP Password: Your Yahoo email account’s password
  5. Type of Encryption: TLS or SSL
  6. SMTP Port: 587 (if TLS) or 465 (if SSL)

Outlook

  1. SMTP Host: smtp-mail.outlook.com
  2. SMTP Authentication: True
  3. SMTP Username: Your email address
  4. SMTP Password: Your password
  5. Type of Encryption: TLS
  6. SMTP Port: 25 or 587 (if port 25 is blocked)

SendGrid

  1. SMTP Host: smtp.sendgrid.net
  2. SMTP Authentication: True
  3. SMTP Username: Your SendGrid username
  4. SMTP Password: Your SendGrid password
  5. Type of Encryption: TLS
  6. SMTP Port: 587 (if TLS) or 465 (if SSL). If you select “No Encryption” use port 25 instead.

Mandrill

  1. SMTP Host: smtp.mandrillapp.com
  2. SMTP Authentication: True
  3. SMTP Username: Your Mandrill username
  4. SMTP Password: Your Mandrill password
  5. Type of Encryption: TLS
  6. SMTP Port: 587, 25 or 2525 (if TLS or No Encryption). For SSL use port 465.

If you have any questions feel free to share it in the comment section.

If you like SMTP Mailer please leave it a rating. A huge thanks in advance!

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35 thoughts on “SMTP Mailer Plugin For WordPress”

  2. Hi I am using the Gmail SMTP plugin and i am receiving an error on Missing Extension openssl.

    Can you help me fix it please.

    Reply

  4. Hi admin.
    Using smtp-mailer, have an issue:

    Fatal error: Cannot redeclare class phpmailerException in /home/ppsotoas/public_html/wp-includes/class-phpmailer.php on line 3828

    Any idea?

    Reply

  5. I’ve tried using both Gmail plugin and SMTP-Mailer that you’ve created, and I have also tried several different accounts. I am using Google Apps accounts, and have had it work previously, even fixed security settings on account to “allow” the smtp access…. what am I missing?

    Connection: opening to ssl://smtp.gmail.com:465, timeout=300, options=array ()
    SMTP ERROR: Failed to connect to server: Connection refused (111)
    SMTP connect() failed. https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer/wiki/Troubleshooting

    OS: Linux a2plcpnl0595.prod.iad2.secureserver.net 2.6.32-604.30.3.lve1.3.63.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Sun Sep 27 06:34:10 EDT 2015 x86_64
    PHP version: 5.4.45
    WordPress version: 4.4.2
    WordPress multisite: Yes
    openssl: Available
    allow_url_fopen: Enabled
    stream_socket_client: Available
    fsockopen: Available

    Reply

  6. Yeah. I went thru tutorial for both plugins… it’s GoDaddy who hosts my sites, and Google Apps for my email system.

    Reply

    1. @Chris, GoDaddy might be the issue here. Can you please contact them to see if they allow external SMTP configuration?

      Reply

  7. I keep getting a whole bunch of error code lines but the last 7 are:
    SMTP Error: Could not authenticate.
    CLIENT -> SERVER: QUIT
    SMTP -> get_lines(): $data is ""
    SMTP -> get_lines(): $str is "221 2.0.0 closing connection e20sm14124497oic.19 - gsmtp"
    SERVER -> CLIENT: 221 2.0.0 closing connection e20sm14124497oic.19 - gsmtp
    Connection: closed
    SMTP Error: Could not authenticate.

    I’ve tried changing the option to allow for less secure apps but this didn’t make a difference. Can not receive any test emails

    Reply

    1. @Richard, Have you logged into your Gmail account after this? You might see a security warning in your account upon login. As soon as you confirm that it was you who tried to login, the plugin should be able to connect to the Gmail SMTP server.

      What port combination did you use? Please copy and paste the content from the “Server Info” tab so I can take a look.

      Reply

  8. I am having the same issue on Weblayer host, cannot log in to Gmail account, we had the same issue on our rudby on rails application (could not connect at the same time as Wpress) and we resolved just including including the line :domain => ‘»your domain«’, … follows the coding for Rugby-on-rails and it works! can somebody try it for Wpress and give a fedback? I am not programmer just somebody that is f&ck up

    config.action_mailer.smtp_settings = {
    :address => "smtp.gmail.com",
    :port => 587,
    :domain => ' xxxx.com',
    :user_name => "xyz@gmail.com",
    :password => "password",
    :authentication => :plain,
    :enable_starttls_auto => true
    }

    Reply

  9. Hello,,team
    Appear warning like these,,all ssl port and option has tested…still…wordpress 4.5

    SMTP Error: Could not authenticate.
    CLIENT -> SERVER: QUIT
    SMTP -> get_lines(): $data is ""
    SMTP -> get_lines(): $str is "221 2.0.0 closing connection tn5sm80142858pac.32 - gsmtp"
    SERVER -> CLIENT: 221 2.0.0 closing connection tn5sm80142858pac.32 - gsmtp
    Connection: closed

    SMTP Error: Could not authenticate

    Would you like explain me how?

    regard,,

    Reply

    1. @yudi, I have added some troubleshooting steps in the “Gmail” section. Please give it a try and let me know how it goes.

      Reply

  10. I am trying to run the tests from the “Test Email” tab and I am only getting this message:
    Connection: opening to smtp.myurl.com:25, timeout=300, options=array (), where myurl is the same domain the wordpress site sits on.

    How can I determine what the problem is from this message? There is no response information being presented.

    Reply

    1. @Tony, I’m not really familiar with this host. Do you have instructions as to how you can configure SMTP on their server?

      Reply

  13. I’m trying with Yahoo. I’m getting this message “There was an error trying to send your message. Please try again later.”. Could you please help with this?

    Reply

    1. @Vicky, What port combinations did you try? Please provide the content from the “Server Info” tab so I can take a look.

      Reply

  14. Great plugin and looks exactly like what I am looking for.
    After configuring the plugin I can send the test E-mail successfully (I’m using mailgun.org as SMTP server). However, I get neither new comments nor user registration notifications (or any other E-mails) although the notifications are enabled in the settings of my wordpress. It seems like the wordpress simply doesn’t use this plugin when attempts to send E-mails. Do you have an idea what I am doing wrong?
    Here is my server info:
    OS: Linux 846098f38250 3.13.0-74-generic #118-Ubuntu SMP Thu Dec 17 22:52:10 UTC 2015 x86_64
    PHP version: 5.6.21
    WordPress version: 4.5.2
    WordPress multisite: No
    openssl: Available
    allow_url_fopen: Enabled
    stream_socket_client: Available
    fsockopen: Available

    Reply

    1. @Alex, Have you tried the test email functionality? WordPress uses the wp_mail function to send email. As long as that functon is getting called the plugin should be able to override the default configurations with SMTP.

      Reply

      1. If you mean the test E-mail functionality provided by the plugin – then yes, I’ve tried it and it works, I also receive the test E-mail. I’ve tested several other plugins and couldn’t get them to work, even the test E-mail functionality wouldn’t work.
        The only plugin that works for me is Easy WP SMTP, but I am getting HTTP timeouts on POST requests with it (e.g., comments) because the plugin is taking too long to send an E-mail and the HTTP handler wouldn’t return until that operation is finished, so I had to deactivate it.
        I was trying to find a way to debug wordpress to see why the smtp-mailer-plugin can’t deliver E-mails (while test E-mail works!), but couldn’t find a simple way to do that (I’m not very familiar with php). I’m using nginx with fastcgi and have php-fpm log set to ‘warning’ – no errors from smtp-mailer-plugin in there when I’m e.g. posting a comment.
        Could you maybe give me a hint on a way to debug the wordpress/plugin?

        Reply

          1. My wordpress is running in a Docker container on Amazon AWS. I don’t think I have the timeout issue, the Test E-mail is sent very fast, within 1 second. I still suspect there is something wrong with my WP configuration like it tries to use system mail instead of wp_mail, although from you say I understand it’s not possible.
            If it even makes sense, is there a way to make wordpress send me an E-mail other than creating a comment or adding a new user (other than the Test Mail of the plugin)? I have several other plugins, but I don’t see where there could be a collision with smtp-mailer.

          2. @Alex, I don’t think there is an email functionality in the WordPress admin. Do you want to contact Amazon AWS to see if they have any restrictions on outgoing email? It seems to only happen on the front end.

          3. I’ve just discovered that the E-mail notification on user profile update (change of password) works. However, the E-mail notification on a new comment still doesn’t. I believe this rules out the hosting or smtp-mailer configuration problem. What else could it be then?
            Double checked the Settings -> Discussion -> Email me whenever … Anyone posts a comment: it’s enabled. Any idea?

  15. OS: Linux a2plcpnl0035.prod.iad2.secureserver.net 2.6.32-604.30.3.lve1.3.63.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Sun Sep 27 06:34:10 EDT 2015 x86_64
    PHP version: 5.4.43
    WordPress version: 4.5.2
    WordPress multisite: No
    openssl: Available
    allow_url_fopen: Enabled
    stream_socket_client: Available
    fsockopen: Available

    I use ARfroms WordPress pro From plugin. When i submitted the form , submit successfully but i can’t get any email from the site.

    I use SMTP plugin for phpmail …it work’s for me. but when i’ll try to use your plugin i got this message :

    Connection: opening to ssl://smtp.gmail.com:465, timeout=300, options=array ()
    SMTP ERROR: Failed to connect to server: Connection refused (111)
    SMTP connect() failed. https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer/wiki/Troubleshooting

    Can you please give me solution.. thanks

    Reply

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