If your WordPress website sends contact form enquiries, booking requests or WooCommerce orders, you shouldn’t be relying on the PHP mail function.
While it may work, email delivery is now so complicated with Gmail, Microsoft and other providers increasingly strict about SPF, DKIM, DMARC and sender reputation, an email coming directly from your web server is more than likely to end up in spam or not even arrive at all.
SMTP
To combat this, you can install a plugin such as WP Mail SMTP which allows WordPress to send emails through a proper email delivery service rather than your hosting server’s PHP mail system and one service we recommend is Brevo.
Once configured, the process looks like this: WordPress → WP Mail SMTP → Brevo → Customer
Brevo handles the actual delivery, while your domain can be properly authenticated using the DNS records required for SPF, DKIM and DMARC.
This doesn’t guarantee every email will land in an inbox, nothing can, but it’s a much more reliable setup than simply relying on PHP mail.
Brevo Free Plan
Brevo’s free plan allows you to send up to 300 emails per day, which is more than enough for startups and many small business websites sending contact enquiries, booking notifications, WooCommerce emails and similar transactional messages.
And as your business and requirements grow, you can simply move to a paid plan.
SMTP is one of those bits of website infrastructure that’s worth getting right from the start and WP Mail SMTP + Brevo makes it easy.
