How to use SendGrid on your MainWP dashboard site
Published on September 5, 2018 by Sebastian Moran in MainWP Blog under MainWP Customization, MainWP How To's
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SendGrid offers a free plan which provides 40,000 emails a month, which should be more than enough for most MainWP dashboard sites. Using a transactional email provider like SendGrid, SparkPost or SendinBlue.
Go to https://signup.sendgrid.com/
After you have signed up for a free plan you will be in the main app.
On your MainWP dashboard site look for SendGrid and install it as a new plugin on the site.
Go back to the SendGrid app and then click on Settings > API Key then click on the Create API Key button.
Create the API, then on the next screen the API key will be shown, this is what you will need to copy into the settings of the SendGrid plugin.
Copy the API key and also enter the name, sending address, reply address and set the content/type, the default is text/plain, change this to text/html, click on the update settings button.
Now all site mail will be sent out from SendGrid transactional service, it takes over any wp_mail() functions that WordPress will use.
When you go back to the main dashboard in wp-admin, you will now notice a new admin dashboard widget called SendGrid WordPress Statistics, which will show you the following.
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7 comments
Scott
Caveat emptor: with free plans from SendGrid, Mailgun, etc, you have no control over the IP address that’s used to send mail through. These IPs are typically shared, and it’s not uncommon for them to be on someone’s blacklist (especially Microsoft’s, so delivery may be an issue with any Hotmail or Outlook address). I’ve tested almost every transactional email service and ended up using Postmark, which costs $10/mo (minimum), but has proven to be reliable. Plus their customer support is fantastic.
Sebastian Moran
Postmark does look very good Scott, thank you for the recommend.
Scott
sure!
Sebastian Moran
The WordPress plugin for Postmark looks like it is easy to use.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/postmark-approved-wordpress-plugin/
Sebastian Moran
You can have a dedicated IP address if using SendGrid.
https://sendgrid.com/docs/ui/account-and-settings/dedicated-ip-addresses/
Scott
true, but not on their free plan.
Sebastian Moran
Other options would be SparkPost, SendinBlue and Amazon SES.
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