ExpressionEngine Docs

Outgoing Email

Control Panel Location: Settings > Outgoing Email

This section of the Control Panel allows an administrator to set the preferences relating to how Email is sent within an ExpressionEngine site. These settings affect not only how Emails are sent via the Communicate section of the Control Panel but also how Emails are generally sent by the system.

Settings

Address

This setting specifies the From and Reply-to Email address to use with system generated Emails. With the increase in spam on the internet, many Email servers will not accept Emails without a valid From or Reply-to address, therefore we strongly recommend filling this field out.

From name

This setting lets you specify a name to be used in the From and Reply-to email fields. As with the above field, we encourage you to set it to help prevent your emails from being filtered as spam.

Character encoding

Specifies the character encoding that the emails will be sent with. “UTF-8” is recommended.

Protocol

Email can be sent by ExpressionEngine by one of three protocols.

Related ExpressionEngine University articles: Using Mailgun to Send Emails from your Website

Server address

If you chose SMTP as your email protocol above, then you will need to fill out this field, which specifies the server address of the SMTP server. This setting is ignored if “SMTP” is not selected as the email protocol.

Username

The username used to log in to your SMTP server. Not all SMTP servers require you to authenticate, but many of them do. In those cases you will need to specify the username and password (below).

Password

The password used to log in to your SMTP server. Not all SMTP servers require you to authenticate, but many of them do. In those cases you will need to specify the username (above) and password.

Connection type

Cryptographic protocol for SMTP. Can be set to Unencrypted (not recommended), SSL or TLS

TLS version

When using TLS, provide the version that you can find in the instructions from your SMTP provider. Version 1.2 is the most commonly used

Email newline character

\n provides the widest compatibility; if this setting does not work for you, refer to your email provider for instructions. Some folks have reported that \r\n works best for Outlook 365 via SMTP. There is also a system config override setting for this.

Mail format

When you send email via the Communicate section of your Control Panel, you are able to send HTML formatted emails. This preference sets whether the Communicate section has “Plain text” or “HTML” selected by default.

Enable word-wrapping?

Determines whether to have the email sending routine “word wrap” email messages. This setting can be overridden when sending email using the Communicate page. It’s generally recommended to enable this setting, as this is required to comply with the email specification.