How to set up SMTP

You can set up a custom SMTP server such that Prefinery emails are sent to your users through your own SMTP server, and not through Prefinery's servers. 

The feature can be accessed and enabled by navigating to Emails > Custom SMTP Server on your project dashboard: 

Pros & cons of using your own SMTP server

Here's why you may want to use your own custom SMTP server for your project's email delivery: 

• You already have a relationship with an ESP and want to use it for all of your company's email delivery
• Your own ESP provides more data/analytics than shown in your Prefinery account, or you want to see all your email delivery metrics in one place.
• While we're confident with how secure our email delivery service is, perhaps you'd feel more comfortable keeping this in-house, or with an ESP with which you already have a relationship.
• Data protection laws, regulations, or company policy require that you not outsource email delivery to a third-party sub-processor, or you are looking to reduce the number of providers on your sub-processor list.

It's not all roses when using your own SMTP server, though. Here are some cons that may or may not matter to you: 

• Your project's email analytics as accessible from the dashboard will be incomplete. We will no longer be able to track clicks, bounces and spam complaints when using your own server.

With all that said, when using your own SMTP server there’s no longer a requirement to verify your domain in Prefinery, but you still need to confirm the sender address (by clicking a link/button in an email like the one below sent to that address). 

This is required for SMTP setup. Even through a SMTP endpoint, if the sender address has not been confirmed, Prefinery will not send any email. A test email is sent through a newly added SMTP endpoint as part of adding and validating it. No need to add DNS records.

Setting up SMTP with your email service provider

Here's how you can setup SMTP with the ESP you are using: 

• SendGrid
• Postmark