Mail Sending and SMTP Integrations

Fast Member offers you a few options for sending your site emails depending on your needs.

For example if you are on shared hosting and plan to use the Fast Member Autoresponders or Email Broadcast then at the very least we would recommend to use the Throttling option. However we would highly recommend you use an external SMTP service to get the best deliverability.

Here is an explanation of the various Mailing Methods available.

Self Hosted – This will use the PHP mailer on your server. It will be used to simply send messages from your site and is suitable for quick setup without the internal Autoresponder or Broadcast system being used.

Self Hosted with Throttling – This will also use the PHP mailer, except it will also require a cron job to schedule the messages being sent at the rate you set in the box. This is suitable for bulk sending messages and will ensure your server doesn’t just try dump all the emails at once, which could get you flagged for spamming.

To use the Self Hosted With Throttling will require a Cron Job creating. You can view a detailed Cron Job tutorial here.

Send Grid – This will allow you to send directly through the Send Grids service. You will require an account with Send Grid, who offer very reasonable sending rates and excellent deliverability.

Simply enter your Send Grid username and password and all your site emails will be routed through this service.

You can signup for Send Grid here

WordPress Mailer – This will route your site emails through the wp_mail() WordPress mailer function.

While it is similar to Self Hosted option it is useful if you wish to make use of any other plugins which use the WordPress mailer.

Once such plugin which you may find useful is POST SMTP. With this plugin you can get some advanced email testing options and an email log which can be useful for debugging any email issues.

SMTP Server – There are number of bulk email services suitable for sending your members emails. The SMTP options will allow you to route all your site emails through any service which supports SMTP integration.

The settings you enter here will be specific to the particular service you choose. If you are using a more advanced setup you may even employ your own SMTP server and would enter the settings here.

You can view more detailed tutorials for the various services below.

Amazon SES
SendGrid
MailGun
Mailjet
Mandrill
Postmark
SendinBlue