It's tempting to setup email sending using SMTP but there are a few things to consider.
✋ Passwords Can Expire — Use App Passwords instead
Using SMTP requires a username and password. By default many user credentials for cloud email will expire and the password would need to be reset. Alternatively they may require Multi Factor Authentication (MFA) which is not compatible with SMTP. To avoid this affecting your email delivery most systems allow you to issue an application specific password which will never expire and is very long to avoid being guessed easily. You do not need to keep a copy of these, just set them up and leave them in place. Here are examples of how to set these up:
✋ Rate Limits
Using SMTP is always subject to rate limiting. That means that there is maximum number of emails that can be accepted per minute. These are some examples of rate limits of popular SMTP solutions. Remember that even if these limits don't look to bad, you must consider that all of your email counts not just order emails (forgot password, welcome, etc.). Also when you reach the limit it will just stop working.
Office365 – 30 messages per minute (see article) and Recipient rate limit of 10,000 recipients per day
Gmail and GSuite – a range depending on the implementation and licenses with some limits as low as 100 to 150 per day.
Check your own SMTP provider for specific limits!
⚠️ Office 365 Feature Limitation
Office 365 has a feature limitation with SMTP which prevents use of our CC and BCC (blind carbon copy) features on emails. If these features are used while sending email through the Office 365 SMTP then your customer will receive two or three copies of the same email each time.
The solution is to stop duplicate emails to your customer when using SMTP with Office365 is to switch to SES or to stop using CC and BCC addresses when sending emails from EvolutionX. Here are a list of the areas which can cause BCC in emails:
Admin → Store Settings → Branch Order emails
Admin → Store Settings → Account Mangers
Admin → Email → Templates (each template can have CC/BCC settings)
👍 Email Sending using SES – Recommended!
We recommend all stores to setup their email sending using SES. This is an easy process but most importantly it does not have the sending limits of SMTP, does not have the email duplication issue that Office 365 has (see above) and can offer high delivery rates.