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The ability to deliver emails from your membership account is huge!

May 5, 2022

Second, and almost as important, you have to know that your emails get delivered fast and reliably to your members their inboxes.

Through my many years of assistance, I've only met a handful of website owners have even given a second thought to the way their email messages are distributed, the location they're being sent from, and what potential issues they may encounter when they choose to leave WordPress email as the default.

Don't get me wrong, the reality that WordPress will nearly always be able to send out emails without you having to touch a single finger to make it happen is amazing. However, there are a few potential concerns that must be considered.

The Problem is with WordPress Mail

In order to avoid getting technical, WordPress (by default) will try to send emails via a local mail server whenever it is possible. This is essentially 99percent of the times the emails you receive are sent via the same server which your website is located on. This may not sound too bad However, there are some issues that often get overlooked:

  • Are you on the shared hosting servers? If yes, what has others on the server done to tarnish its reputation with email suppliers?
  • What is the history the IP address on your server's server has with email block lists?
  • Does your webhost allow you to change the "From" mail address or "From" name that appears in email messages sent out?
  • Do your webhosting provider place limits on how many emails you are able to send out each day or month? If yes, what exactly are the limits? What are the chances that you will meet them?
  • What is the current uptime of the server that is provided by your hosting provider and how do they respond to problems?
  • What happens to emails that fail to go through? Are they retested -- or just dropped?
  • What number of other users are in the same server you? What is the speed at which webhosts respond to requests?

There are many other problems, but these are the ones that are most commonly encountered and provide a good start in finding out the reliability of your email provider. will be reliable or not.

Take, for instance for example, you've put a Reminder email in the system to inform members about a week prior to when their credit card runs out. Imagine that you've got 800 members (a somewhat exaggerated figure however not unimaginable as a huge subscription site) with credit cards that will expire at the end of this month.

Watch >> email overview

The day the reminder goes off it will then send 800 emails throughout the day to those customers, informing them that they must update their credit card information.

Or, what if your mail server was put on the block list of several of the major email service providers. Which 800 folks would never see this email as it's classified as spam?

Consider these issues if you want to cut down on the cost of financial and customer service stress. This is especially important if managing a site for memberships that has something similar to .

There's a way to solve the problem!

Now you're probably thinking "Great! Another thing to stress and worry about." However, I've got one good thing that these problems are avoidable.

In the second, you'll have to choose your third-party SMTP providers. A few of the top choices are Mailjet, SendGrid, MailGun, and Amazon SES.

The great thing about third-party mailers is that all email messages and fail-to-send alerts are logged. If a customer complains about not receiving an email, go through the log to see what caused the issue in the delivery of their email. More often than not it is because the user has incorrectly filled in their email address while signing up.

Setting up an Third Party Email Service

MailGun and Amazon both have Free tiers you can use, but for this installation guide, I will be using SendGrid.

 Step 1 - Signup For SendGrid

Head to https://sendgrid.com/user/signup and create your free account.

 Step 2 - Tell WordPress to send email messages via SendGrid

This sounds complex, but it's actually very simple. I promise. Go over to the WordPress Dashboard > Plugins > Add New. Now search on the internet for "SendGrid" and then install the official SendGrid plugin.

This will take precedence over will override "Name" as well as the "Sending Address" fields under "Mail Settings"," thus there's no need to fill those out.

That's it! It's now possible to rest knowing that your emails are delivered promptly and SendGrid is dealing with all the stressful parts to make it easier for you.