How to Send WordPress Emails with Sendinblue SMTP

We all know how WordPress’ default PHP mailer is; unreliable and dated. The reason why you should never use WordPress to send emails is that they’ll either get blocked by your hosting or end up in spam.

If you want your emails to be delivered in time and not end up in the spam, you need to integrate an SMTP server into your WordPress site for sending emails.

A reliable SMTP server like Sendinblue overrides WordPress’ default wp_mail() function to send your emails. On the other hand, an SMTP plugin helps you connect to said SMTP server.

And today, we’ll show you how to integrate Sendinblue with FluentSMTP, one of the most reliable SMTP services for WordPress.

So, let’s get into it!

What is Sendinblue?

Sendinblue is regarded as one of the leading transactional email services for WordPress. They offer reliable email deliverability and can be easily integrated to be used as your WordPress site’s default mailer.

To use Sendinblue as a mailer, you need to integrate it with a reliable SMTP plugin that is easy to set up and offers most of the features for free. That’s the very reason we’re showing you how to set up Sendinblue and integrate with FluentSMTP for Sending WordPress Emails.

In addition, it is strongly recommended by them to use a domain-specific custom email address because it improves reliability, hence, also improving deliverability.

How to set up the Sendinblue mailer with FluentSMTP

Sendinblue is an effective and reliable WordPress mailer. To use its mailing service and ensure the deliverability of the emails your WordPress site sends, you need yet another reliable SMTP plugin such as FluentSMTP.

Don’t worry. FluentSMTP is a free plugin with some excellent free features. So there’s no cost involved!

An SMTP plugin like FluentSMTP essentially reconfigures WordPress’ wp_mail() function and sends the emails using SMTP instead of PHP mail. Let’s jump into integrating FluentSMTP with the Sendinblue mailer! 

Create and activate your Sendinblue account

To use its service, first, you have to have a SendinBlue account. If you don’t have one, you can create an account for free, without providing your card information. 

Upon providing your email and generating a password, you’ll get a confirmation email that’ll take you back to your account to fill up user information such as your First Name, Last Name, and Cell Number. 

After you provide that info, Sendinblue will ask for your company details such as— company name and address, team size, how many contacts you have, and whether you plan to sell online or not.

Then, to finish the signing-up process, you’d have to select a plan based on your business requirement. The free version lets you send 300 emails per day. If you need more emails of premium features you’ll need to choose a plan that works for you.

Once you’re done with creating your Sendinblue account, you can proceed to the next phase.

Verify your domain on Sendinblue

As the next step, we strongly recommend verifying your domain on Sendinblue. This will electronically sign emails with your domain name. This is what we call the DKIM signature. 

Read: What are DMARC, SPF, and DKIM?

DomainKeys Identified Mail or DKIM is an email security protocol that tells your ISPs that you’re a trusted sender. Authenticating your parent domain with Sendinblue will help prevent your emails from ending up in the spam folder.

To verify your domain, open the settings menu from the upper right corner and click on ‘Senders & IP, and go to Domains.

Then add your domain.

Once you add your domain name, a new window will appear containing several TXT files. You’ll need to add these TXT files to the DNS records on the cPanel of your web hosting account.

Open up a new window in your browser and log in to your web hosting account and the TXT records in the designated field.

After you’ve uploaded the TXT records to the DNS, go back to Sendinblue and click Verify & Authenticate to check if they’ve been configured or not.

A verified TXT record will display the text ✅ Value matched instead of ❌ Value mismatched shown in the picture above. Note that DNS changes can take 24-48 hours to get verified and authenticated, so be patient if it doesn’t change its value immediately.

Download and install FluentSMTP from the WordPress repository

Now that you’ve set up your Sendinblue account, it’s time for the next phase which is setting up your SMTP plugin, in this case, FluentSMTP. 

To that, first, go to the Plugins menu in your WordPress dashboard. Then click Add New.

This will take you to the WordPress plugin directory. In the search bar of the directory, type FluentSMTP and click Install Now(FluentSMTP is already installed and activated in the below image).

Once installed, you need to activate it from the same window. Activating it will place FluentSMTP in the ‘Settings’ menu and you can access the plugin from there.

Now you’ll need to choose an email service. Select Sendinblue from the list of available mailers. The following window will require inputting the From Email from which, all your emails will be sent and the From Name which will be displayed as the sender name. 

There’s also an option called Force Sender Name which will force the From Name to be used for all emails, ignoring values set by other plugins.

Retrieve the API key from your SendinBlue account

The next step in the integration process is getting the API key from your SendinBlue account. To get the API key, go to your SendinBlue account settings menu and then to the SMTP & API option.

Go to the API Keys section and click Generate a new API key.

A new information box will appear where you can assign a name for the API key. Once created, copy your API key and go back to FluentSMTP.

Your new API key is ready to input in the API Key tab now. After doing so, click Save Connection Setting.

You can choose to store your API key in the database or the config file. Either way, by saving the connection setting, the integration between SendinBlue and FluentSMTP is finally done!

Test your email deliverability

Enter a ‘From Email’ on the ‘Email Test’ tab. The ‘From Email’ should be the same as the one Sendinblue set up for you. You can leave it blank as well, but in that case, the default SMTP Driver will be applied.

Your SMTP configuration is active when you see the success message.

Start sending WordPress emails with Sendinblue

There are many steps to be taken to ensure proper email deliverability from WordPress. We tried to make this process linear for you through this blog.

We hope this blog helps you send out your emails from WordPress swiftly and without hassle using Sendinblue mailer. If you still face any issues setting up Sendinblue with FluentSMTP, let us know in the comments below!

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