One of the most important things that help you website grow no matter if it’s a store or a blog,  is SMTP. The most important thing is that will have the knowledge and right tool (plugin) to do it.
In this guide, I will show how to debug your SMTP delivery with the most powerful tools built inside “Post SMTP” plugin for WordPress.

What is Post SMTP?

Post SMTP is a full solution to connect your WordPress site to an SMTP service, he has a powerful email logger so you can track and ensure delivery of each email and what makes him more unique that besides the full SMTP support he has a built-in support to send emails using your SMTP provider platform (API).
Sending using an API supported by Gmail, Sendgrid, Mailgun, and Mandrill.

Post SMTP have some cool features that can help you debugging your SMTP delivery.

There are a few built-in tools but we will start with a new external tool I have made.

External Tool – SMTPER

SMTP delivery testing tool by Post SMTP

SMTPER is a standalone tool I have developed that you can use to test your SMTP service in external place and understand if the problem related to your hosting or your SMTP service.
SMTPER engine is the same one used by Post SMTP.

The tool is for debugging purpose only – your credentials are never saved or used by anyone.

The tool can be found here:
https://smtper.postmansmtp.com/

Built-in Tools

1. Email Log

Post SMTP has a complete Email log solution built-in.
Go to the Email Log and check your last failed email status.

WordPress full email log with filtering

The status message should give a clear direction to the problem, if not you can hover the email row and click the “Session Transcript” and a popup window with additional information about the SMTP session will jump. you can find more detailed information about each step in the Session.

WordPress Email log transcript

After you resolve your issue you can hover the email row again and this time press “resend”, this will open an input box that already populated with the original email recipients so you only need to press the resend button.

WordPress email log resend

 

2. Connectivity Test

This is a full feature Connectivity Test, You can see the full status of your outgoing mail server (only for SMTP use).
You can see if the socket (route) needed for your service are open and doesn’t have any errors.

WordPress SMTP Connectivity Test Link

WordPress SMTP Connectivity Test results

4. The Diagnostic Test

Can be found under Connectivity Test in the previous sectionThis will help me to diagnose your problem, it’s outputting an important info about your Post SMTP installation like:
Missing extensions, your current configured email delivery and more.

WordPress SMTP Diagnostic Test

if none of the above work, just open me a support topic with the info here:

  1. email log status.
  2. current ports status
  3. diagnostic status.

Hope this will help me and you get a better and quick support.