Email and Bulk Email settings

[Mrbb922]

I have been toying around with the email settings a little bit and I have found a way to completely move away from places like pepipost, sendinblue and others while keeping more consistent email templates and zero badges or ad's using their free services while also avoiding the spam/junk folder for your marketing campaigns.

Firstly you will be using your hosting provider and cpanel. First thing is you will have to 'Authenticate' your 'DKIM' and 'SPF' records by:

• Log into your 'Cpanel' account;
• Scroll down to 'Email' section;
• Click 'Authenticate';
• Enable 'DKIM';
• Enable 'SPF'.

Now if you are using a CDN (like Cloudflare or MaxCDN) you will also need to update your DNS records through those services. To do so you will need to log into your CDN account, navigate to the DNS subsection and the following TXT record:

• yourdomain.com
• the raw SPF record generated in Cpanel under the Enabled SPF button.

Authenticating your domains will now keep any incoming and outgoing messages being sent to either server or client Junk folders. Your next step is to create email accounts inside your cpanel for you to use. I recommend creating the following accounts and give them 'unlimited' quota:

• no_reply@yourdomain.com (This will be the email that sends out order confirmations, newsletters, or others that do not need communication beyond its point)
• support@yourdomain.com (for any support related forms ex: billing, shipping, membership, ect)
• admin@yourdomain.com (for anything else outside those spheres ex: account creations, wordpress or plugin updates, ect)

Now you need to understand why there is really no difference between using your hosting and a different SMTP service (that costs extra).

• Firstly, those same SMTP services are "Hosted" which means they by no means also have complete 100% uptime. 99.99% is the best we are going to get for anything hosting related. If your host is already providing that, then why pay for a service that can't do more?
• Secondly, the templates are completely different then the ones handled by woo. So to keep the same style and color you can literally insert the HTML template from woo (just the basic layout) to match your bulk emails as well. Keeping it more consistent.
• Thirdly, unless you are paying for those other SMTP's service, you will likely have an ad, badge, or powered by on the bottom of your emails. The only thing that should be displayed is YOUR content and company.
• And lastly, if you ever go over your service plan, you are charged per individual email. Imagine if you will how quickly emails can actually ad up. For each order you are sending a 'order invoice', 'order processing', 'order shipped' email. That's 3 emails for 1 order, that doesn't include 'account creation', 'newletter confirmation' (which should be double opt-in), or any other. So if you do 10 orders, that's a guaranteed 30 emails. They add up quickly, especially on top of bulk emails such as newsletters.

Now you also need to understand how cpanel emails work (and this is going to be a normal case scenario). So if your using a shared hosting plan, you will be limited to 50 emails per hour, so for every rolling 24 hours you can 50*24=1,200 to know that you can send 1,200 emails per day. But you really shouldn't be using the basic shared plan anyways, your a store not some third rate blog. Most 'Business Shared' plans allow 10,000 emails per hour. That's right even with a shared hosting plan, you can have up to 240,000 per day without paying a single cent more for another SMTP service that can't provide more up time. And if your using VPS ( which I recommend) or Dedicated, your emails per hour and day are unlimited.

Some of you may say, "Well those services easily keep track of my subscribers". But I say wordpress already does that, and so does any form builder you use (ex: Ninja Forms, WPForms, ect). Which you can export to a .CSV file and import to your PHPList inside cpanel. You can also set your email up on things like 'Windows 10 Mail' or any other POP3/IMAP compatible service so you never have to actually navigate to a separate site, and all your emails can be in one simple app/program.

So, as a result. You can have more emails per hour/day sent, more consistent templates, added convenience, same up time using your cpanel emails for FREE using your hosting/cpanel emails.