Send WordPress email through Sendwax with FluentSMTP
Free, open source, and happy to hold several connections at once.
The values
In Settings → FluentSMTP → Add Another Connection, choose Other SMTP — not a named provider, since we are not in the list yet — and enter:
| Host | smtp.sendwax.com |
|---|---|
| Port | 587 |
| Encryption | TLS / STARTTLS |
| Username | sendwax |
| Password | a send-only API key from API keys in the dashboard |
| From | an address you have approved under Senders |
The username is literally sendwax for everybody — the key is what
identifies your account. Use a send-only key: it can send mail and nothing else, so a key
sitting in a settings screen on shared hosting cannot read your contacts.
Step by step
- Set From Email to an approved sender, and tick the box that forces it.
- Choose Other SMTP as the connection provider.
- Fill in the values in the table above and turn Authentication on.
- Leave Store Access Keys in DB enabled, or put the key in
wp-config.phpasFLUENTMAIL_SMTP_PASSWORDif you would rather it were not in the database at all.
A second connection is a second set of rules
FluentSMTP can route different senders down different connections. That is useful, and it also means a From address you forgot about can still be going somewhere else — check the routing on the connection list, not just the connection you just added.
Checking it worked
FluentSMTP has an Email Test tab, and its own log of what it sent. Compare that log against your Sendwax activity: they should agree message for message.
What else to know
We do not relay your message byte for byte — we read it and build a new one that our DKIM signature covers, which is what makes the reporting and the unsubscribe handling work. It costs you inline image placement, threading and a few other things, all listed on the SMTP relay page. Worth two minutes before you point production at it.
If you are writing the code rather than configuring somebody else's, the API is the better door: a message id per recipient and an error you can read, instead of a three-digit reply your framework swallowed.
Other setups
- WP Mail SMTP — The most installed SMTP plugin on WordPress. Takes about two minutes.
- Post SMTP — Keeps its own email log and can alert you when a send fails.
- Easy WP SMTP — The plainest of them. Nothing to configure beyond the connection.
- Gravity SMTP — From the Gravity Forms team, and the right choice if your forms are theirs.
- WooCommerce — Order confirmations, shipping notices, password resets. The ones customers notice.
- Postfix — Everything on the box — cron, monitoring, mail(1) — goes out properly signed.
- Laravel — Two lines of .env. Or use our package and skip SMTP entirely.
- Python — The standard library, no dependencies.
- Nodemailer — The usual way a Node app sends mail.