We have seen an increase in reports from a number of clients experiencing issues with various parts of the email configuration on their websites. We have been carefully monitoring the issues and testing solutions, and we are now ready to announce our recommended updates to all clients.
What email issues are we finding and how might it affect you?
- OpenCart clients have been reporting issues with order confirmation and customer email deliverability
- WordPress clients have been reporting issues with contact form submission deliverability
Will my website be affected?
In order to answer that question, we first need to explain the difference between various email configurations.
- SMTP Mail (Recommended) – Clients who have provided an SMTP email account for us to use on their website are mostly not affected. SMTP email is usually available if you use services such as Office 365 or Google Mail amongst many other business-grade email services.
- PHP Mail – Clients who have not provided an SMTP email account have their website email settings default to PHP mail which is less effective at ensuring email deliverability and can sometimes cause domain sender authentication issues as well.
How do I know which type of email my website is using?
If you are unsure which type of email your website is configured with and you want to double-check or get ahead of any issues that might arise, please contact us.
What is the solution to these email issues?
Whilst not all clients are affected and different solutions have been implemented over the many years of building websites for our clients, we do now have a recommended solution.
We now recommend all clients use a dedicated SMTP mail relay service and we have tested various solutions over the last few months.
What is an SMTP Mail Relay Service?
An SMTP mail relay service is a dedicated email sending platform which we can use on any website to send emails. It can be used to send emails submitted via your website contact form on WordPress as well as send customer order confirmations on OpenCart.
Using an SMTP mail relay will increase your email deliverability and reliability from your website.
How do I set up an SMTP Mail Relay?
We have been testing various solutions and we have now settled on recommending Mailersend as our preferred choice for our client websites. We can assist with getting clients setup as part of their Managed Web Hosting with us.
Why use Mailersend on my website?
- The service is free for up to 100 emails per day
- The service can scale with your business and email demands
- Increases email deliverability from your website
- Has a user-friendly dashboard to track deliverability results
- Integrates with both OpenCart and WordPress
For more information, we recommend reading about the service on their website here
Are there any costs involved in setting up Mailersend?
You can create a free account with Mailersend and it will remain free as long as your website sends less than 100 emails per month. We are now including this as a premium feature to our managed web hosting service, all clients can send up to 3000 emails per month and be included in their monthly hosting cost.
There is then the installation and configuration work that is required on your website. We can complete this work for you either under your maintenance contract or for a one-time fixed price if you don’t have a website maintenance contract.
I would like to add Mailersend to my website, what should I do?
For more information or if you are unsure about anything in this article please contact us.
Every website is different, some websites are 3 months old, others might be 5 years old. As this is a new service we are now recommending due to increased email deliverability issues, we recommend all clients or potential new clients to check in with us to see what steps need to be taken for your website and to get ahead of any issues that might occur in the future.
