Send WordPress email over SMTP

Configure WP Mail SMTP to send WordPress email through your WebGee mailbox, so contact forms and order confirmations stop landing in spam.

Make WordPress send its email through an authenticated mailbox instead of PHP's mail(). Applies to shared, reseller and Premium hosting.

By default WordPress sends via mail(), which produces unauthenticated messages that fail SPF and DKIM checks. Contact form submissions, password resets and WooCommerce order confirmations then land in spam or vanish. Sending over SMTP fixes that.

Before you begin

You need a mailbox on the domain the site runs on. A Gmail or Outlook address will not work — the whole point is that the sending domain matches the authenticated account.

Create one under cPanel → Email Accounts if you have not already, and note its password.

1. Install the plugin

In WordPress, go to Plugins → Add New.
Search for WP Mail SMTP.
Install and activate WP Mail SMTP by WPForms.

The setup wizard opens on first activation. You can follow it, or select Go back to the Dashboard and use the settings page directly — the fields are the same.

The free version is all you need. WebGee's SMTP works without the Pro upgrade.

2. Configure the sender

Go to WP Mail SMTP → Settings and set:

Field	Value
From Email	The mailbox you created, e.g. `wordpress@example.com`
Force From Email	Ticked
From Name	Your site name

Force From Email must be ticked. Without it, plugins that set their own sender — contact forms especially — send as an address that does not match the authenticated mailbox, and the message is rejected or filtered.

3. Configure the mailer

Choose Other SMTP, then enter:

Field	Value
SMTP Host	`mail.webgee.com`
Encryption	`SSL`
SMTP Port	`465`
Authentication	On
SMTP Username	The full email address
SMTP Password	The mailbox password

Select Save Settings.

If your host blocks port 465, use TLS on port 587 instead — both are supported. See Email server settings.

Check it worked

WP Mail SMTP has a built-in test:

Go to WP Mail SMTP → Tools → Email Test.
Enter an address you can check, and select Send Email.

A success message plus a delivered email means it is working.

If the test fails

SMTP connect() failed — the host or port is wrong. Try 587 with TLS.
Authentication failed — confirm the username is the full email address, and the password by signing in to webmail.
It sends but still lands in spam — the sending address does not match the domain, or your SPF record is wrong. See SPF records for WebGee hosting and Publishing DMARC records.