Sendgrid is a widely used email service that ensures email that is sent from your site will be delivered. In this guide, we’ll show you how to set up Sendgrid along with its WordPress plugin counterpart.
Sign Up for a SendGrid Account
You will first want to create a Sendgrid account, and you can view their plans on their pricing page. For now, we’ll showcase this with the free account that they offer:
Once you update that with your information, you will want to verify your account through the email Sendgrid sends you by clicking the Confirm Email Address button before moving forward.
SendGrid Domain Validation
Now, you will need to update your DNS records to make sure Sendgrid is being validated. In order to do this, you will login to Sendgrid and select Settings > Sender Authentication from the navigation menu on the left.
On the Sender Authentication page, look to the Domain Authentication settings. Click Get Started in the “Authenticate Your Domain” box.
Select Other in DNS host from the dropdown menu on the next page and name Reclaim Hosting as your DNS Host. Then select whether or not you would like to “whitelabel” emails being sent through Sendgrid to show your own domain. For this guide we selected no.
Now type the domain that you would like to be sending emails from, then click Next.
Sendgrid will now display a list of CNAME records to add to your DNS host:
Use the Copy buttons to copy the Host and Value entries over to your cPanel Domains Zone Editor dashboard on the Reclaim Hosting side:
After you have added the records, click the Verify button in the Sendgrid dashboard to ensure your records were set correctly. Sendgrid will then check the DNS records and display a green checkmark if the settings are correct.
Install & Activate WordPress Plugin
With your domain being verified by Sendgrid, now you will want to go to your WordPress Dashboard to install and configure your email settings. Log into your WordPress site, and click Plugins on the left navigation bar. Then click the Add New button at the top of the page and search for the “Sendgrid” plugin.
Select to install the Sendgrid plugin by Sendgrid, then “Activate” immediately after. Please note: If you wish to send email via SMTP instead of Sendgrid’s API (recommended), you will also need to install the Swift Mailer plugin.
Enter API Credentials
Now that Sendgrid is installed and active on your WordPress website, go back to the Sendgrid dashboard (https://app.sendgrid.com/). Select Settings > API Keys from the left-hand navigation, and select to create an API key with Full Access permissions.
Next, Sendgrid will show our API key. Be sure to save your API key in a safe place, as they cannot show it again for security purposes.
Click to copy your API key once you’ve saved it elsewhere, and then go back to your WordPress Dashboard. Under Settings > Sendgrid, enter your API key in the first box, In the second box, make sure to select “API” (if you choose SMTP, you will need the Swift Mailer plugin as well).
Click Update Settings once you have updated your information.
Send a Test Email
To ensure that you’ve configured Sendgrid correctly, you will want to submit a test email. On the Settings > Sendgrid page, scroll to the bottom and fill in the fields to send a test email.
Sendgrid will confirm the email was sent at the top of the page. Check your inbox to ensure you got the message! (You may want to check your spam folder if you haven’t received the message after a few minutes).
Sendgrid has now been successfully configured! Going forward, you can use the Sendgrid Dashboard to track email delivery, errors, spam reports, and bounced emails.