Send WordPress email through Sendwax with Post SMTP
Keeps its own email log and can alert you when a send fails.
The values
In Post SMTP → Settings → the connection wizard, 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
- Run the wizard and choose Other SMTP rather than a named provider.
- Enter the values in the table above when it asks for the outgoing server.
- Set the From address to an approved sender and let Post SMTP enforce it.
- Leave its own email log on. It is the fastest way to see what WordPress handed over before we ever saw it.
Its fallback can hide the problem you are trying to fix
Post SMTP supports a backup connection. If that is configured and Sendwax refuses a message — an unapproved From address, say — the mail may go out through the fallback instead, unsigned and from a different server. Everything looks fine and your deliverability quietly gets worse. Turn the fallback off while you are setting this up.
Checking it worked
Post SMTP → Email Log shows what it sent and the reply it got back. A 250 Ok: queued as line means we have it.
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.
- FluentSMTP — Free, open source, and happy to hold several connections at once.
- 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.