Yes, your website sends emails. Most people are unaware that their website sends emails. Of course, if you have form software or an eCommerce system you may have received an email from your website. But, most people are unaware of this need or its requirements.

Spam Email

Most attempts to hack into a website are for the purpose of using the good reputation of your domain to send spam emails. When this happens your domain can quickly become blacklisted and all your emails will end up in the spam folder or ditched altogether by your Internet Service Provider. I use a product by WPMUDEV called Defender to identify and block attacks on your website. In fact, most of the websites I manage block access to foreign countries using MaxMind keys which track the locations of IP addresses.

Email Addresses

Your website needs to use an email address associated with your domain. If you don’t use an email address associated with your domain it will be marked as SPAM. To avoid this problem for clients who don’t have an email address for their domain I use ForwardEmail.net to establish an alias email address the website can use to send and route emails correctly. Of course, you can use the alias email addresses for many things. Organizations use alias emails when their board or other members change ownership frequently. It allows you to simply change who is receiving email for president@xyz.com, for example.

Email Server

In order to send an email, your website needs an SMTP server. SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. It moves emails on and across networks. I use a couple of SMTP servers but my favorites are SMTP2GO and SendGrid. These services provide great dashboards so I can watch and inspect emails coming from the websites. If an email fails to send then I can see why and remedy the issue. It also provides another level of protection against spammers.

Setting a website up to do something as simple as sending emails is more complicated than most people think. It takes a constant effort to keep up with changes from spammers, and software requirements. There is much more to maintaining email service than I have touched on here. If you have any questions or suggestions please comment below or drop me a personal email.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska