Simple Amazing Suggestion

**Not linked or affiliated to Post SMTP at all – Just another user**

The PHP Mailer is inherently the worst method to use due to the number of hosts that block it and the low spam scores it can give meaning it is by far the least reliable method of sending. It was the exact reason that POST SMTP and other SMTP plugins were born, i.e to get away from using the PHP Mailer option.

If mail is that important to the operation of your website, it would be a much better option to have a 2nd SMTP service set up and available with the SPF and DKIM records set up correctly. Ideally on a separate domain on a separate server. Even Gmail or Office365 correctly authenticated would be more useful as a fallback than the PHP Mailer function.

If PHP Mailer does function, in most ‘shared hosting’ type scenarios any emails sent internally (i.e. from your site to say [email protected], i.e. on the same server are likely to get through. Whilst this may be ok for website admin type emails such as security emails, WordPress system emails etc, PHP Mailer will still be very unreliable for any external emails (such as those sent to your customers in the event of sales emails for example). The use of PHP Mailer as a fallback in that instance would not be of much use.

Having said that it does vary from server to server. If you are running your own dedicated server and your IP and server reputation are fully under your control, and all your server configs are fully accessible by the developer, then there is no reason a PHP Mailer set-up cannot function well. (It is however most unlikely that a dedicated server would be running a mail server in addition to a web server in which case, you’d be using external SMTP servers anyway so adding a standby SMTP server wouldn’t be such a big leap).

**Not linked or affiliated to Post SMTP at all – Just another user**

I understand all of this. However, I have seen many instances where the mail server is blocked due to firewall updates which prevent connecting from the web host to the mail server. In this case, the mail isn’t sent at all until a client figures it out and contacts us to resolve it.

Certainly a less reliable method such as PHP Sendmail would be better than nothing sending at all, right? This is the point that I’m trying to make. The plugin won’t even default back to the least reliable method if a more reliable method fails for any given reason.

Thank you,

Matt

Ah, so you’re saying “what if all SMTP is blocked” by a firewall update for example. Fair point, however, I’d still argue that PHP Mailer is so badly supported and performs, that I wouldn’t rely on that for a back-up either. For that instance, there are two other notification methods other than “Website Admin” (under the Notification tab). Namely SLACK and PUSHOVER. Both of those whilst not allowing emails to still be sent from the site, will alert you to an issue.

Given the number of issues with PHP Mailer and the general lack of technical knowledge by users, having PHP Mailer as a fallback could cause more frustration. PHP Mailer tends not to work in many more cases than it does work. Unfortunately, the abuse of PHP Mailer was such that it simply isn’t trusted by most email providers/spam filters.

There are two notification methods other than WP Admin Email that are much more reliable and do not use the mail ports/mechanism and are therefore not likely to be blocked in addition to any SMTP blocking. If firewall/system update has caused that much grief, there probably isn’t much that will work.

But I get what you are saying, if during Post SMTP there is an issue, then at least try PHP Mailer automatically as a fallback (and perhaps send a system notification to alert the admin of an error) rather than have no fallback set as standard. I’d still argue against that in favour of SLACK/PUSHOVER notifications given how unreliable I’ve found PHP Mailer to be.