By default, WordPress sends its emails using the wp_mail function. This function is nice because it’s super simple. You don’t need to configure anything – your site can start sending emails right away as soon as you install WordPress.
However, the problem is that your WordPress site’s server isn’t really configured to send emails and this method also lacks authentication. When you put those issues together, you end up with a lot of your site’s emails ending up in users’ spam folders.
For example, it’s pretty common for notification emails from a form plugin to end up in spam, as I’ve personally experienced plenty of times back in my “WordPress newbie” days.
So if the problem with WordPress’ built-in email sending tool is that it’s not really designed for emails, the solution is to find something that is specifically designed for sending emails. That “something” is SMTP.
An SMTP server is a web server that’s specifically designed to reliably send emails. Using a WordPress SMTP plugin, you can configure your WordPress site to send all of its emails via the dedicated SMTP server, which will make your emails a lot more reliable.
Once you set up an SMTP server for WordPress, your site’s emails should be able to avoid the spam folder every time.
Better yet, as long as your site doesn’t send more than a few hundred emails per day, you should be able to find a free SMTP server that can get the job done. Speaking of…
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