Configure email settings

Sitefinity CMS enables you to send email notifications and manage notification subscriptions for various components of the system. For example, you can have Sitefinity CMS send content approval workflow notification emails to selected roles or users, to notify a set of users when a comment has been submitted, to send password recovery emails, and so on.

In addition, Sitefinity CMS provides marketers with a powerful email campaigns management module that enables marketers to plan and run promotional campaigns efficiently.

To have Sitefinity CMS send emails, first you must configure the system email settings.

Sitefinity CMS sends emails using a mechanism called Notification service. It  enables you to configure multiple notification profiles with different settings, and to choose which profile is used by specific modules of the system. For more information, see Notification service: Send emails.

When you configure the basic email settings in Sitefinity CMS, you are configuring the Notification profile currently set as default for the system. Out of the box, all Sitefinity CMS components that support sending emails and notifications, use the default Notification service profile. Thus, when you configure the basic email settings profile, all modules use the email settings form that one central location. If you want to configure custom Notification profiles, see Administration: Configure notification profiles.

NOTE: Sitefinity CMS versions 11.2 and olderdid not offer a centralized approach for configuring email setting globally, since some system modules used the legacy system SMTP settings. In Sitefinity CMS versions 12.0 and later, all system modules use the Notification service instead, and thus offer a centralized approach to configuring the global email settings. To preserve working email functionality after upgrading to Sitefinity CMS version 12.0 and later, a dedicated Notifications profile named SystemConfigSmtpSettingsMigrated is automatically created for you. The profile uses the same values as the legacy system SMTP settings and is configured by default for all modules that were using the system SMTP settings in older versions.

To configure the Sitefinity CMS Email settings, follow these steps:

1. In the main menu, click Administration » Settings The Basic Settings page appears.
2. Click Email Settings.
3. Configure the following properties:

   Host	This property defines the SMTP server (host) address that Sitefinity CMS should use to send emails over SMTP protocol. Enter the name or IP address of the SMTP server.
   Port	Enter the port used for SMTP transactions.
   UserName	Enter the user name of the account that you use to connect to the SMTP server.
   Password	Enter the password of the account that you use to connect to the SMTP server.
   Use SSL	Select if you want Sitefinity CMS to use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to encrypt the connection.
   Default sender email address	Enter the desired email address, that will be used by Sitefinity CMS to specify the From: field email address for outgoing emails.
   Default sender name	Enter the desired name that will be used by Sitefinity CMS to specify the From: field name for outgoing emails.

   NOTE: The information you provide for the properties above is external to Sitefinity CMS. It is needed so that your Sitefinity CMS website can connect to an SMTP server and send emails. If you are unsure about the values you should use, contact your website Administrator or email service provider.

4. When you are finished, click Save changes.
5. To verify your settings are correct, you can send a test email, following the instructions below.

To verify whether your basic email settings work as expected, you can send a test email. Proceed as follows:

1.  On the Email Settings screen (Administration » Settings » Email Settings), click the Send test email button.
2. In the dialog that appears, enter an email address where you want to send the test email. Multiple email addresses are supported in a comma-separated format.
3. Click on the Send test mail button.
4. Verify whether the specified email address has received the email message. The message is sent from the Default sender email address you configured, and the subject is Sitefinity email settings test message.

If you are using the Email Campaigns module and would like to track bounced emails, configure Track bounced emails for Email campaigns following the instructions below.

The Sitefinity CMS Email campaigns module enables tracking of bounced emails for the newsletters you send out. For more information about the bounce codes that Sitefinity CMS handles, see Reference: Email bounce codes.

For the Email campaigns module to start generating bounced emails statistics, first you must configure the track bounced emails settings:

1. On the Email Settings screen (Administration » Settings » Email Settings), select the Track bounced emails for Email campaigns checkbox.
2. An extra set of properties appears on the screen. Configure the following properties:

   POP3 server	This property defines the POP3 server address that Sitefinity CMS must use to collect the bounced emails. Enter the name or IP address of the SMTP server.
   Port	Enter the port used for SMTP transactions.
   UserName	Enter the user name of the account that you use to connect to the SMTP server.
   Password	Enter the password of the account that you use to connect to the SMTP server.
   Use SSL for connection to POP3 server	This property determines whether the connection to the POP3 server should be made using SSL or not. Selecting the checkbox instructs Sitefinity CMS to use SSL.
   On soft bounce	A soft bounce is a temporary problem that prevents the email to be delivered to the recipient. You can select one of the following options to determine your Sitefinity CMS behavior in case of a soft bounce: Do nothing Take no action. Retry sending The send operation will be retried. You configure the retry interval and retry count in the Advanced settings. Suspend subscriber The subscriber will be marked as Suspended and will be skipped in the future. Delete subscriber The subscriber is permanently removed from the mailing list.
   On hard bounce	A hard bounce indicates a permanent problem that prevents the email to be delivered to the recipient. You can select one of the following options to determine your Sitefinity CMS behavior in case of a hard bounce: Do nothing Take no action. Retry sending The send operation will be retried. You configure the retry interval and retry count in the Advanced settings. Suspend subscriber The subscriber will be marked as Suspended and will be skipped in the future. Delete subscriber The subscriber is permanently removed from the mailing list.

   
   
3. When finished, click Save changes.

NOTE: To configure the advanced settings of the Email campaigns module regarding tracking bounced messages, such as bounce collection and retry interval times, see Administration: Configure email sending settings.