Reliable Website Email Delivery
Reliable website email delivery, managed for you.
The Background
Website emails (also called transactional emails or system emails) are messages automatically sent by your website to users when they take an action or when the site needs to notify them of something important.
They’re not marketing emails or newsletters — they’re functional, one-to-one messages triggered by user interactions such as:
- Contact form submissions – A visitor submits a form, and your site emails it to you or sends a confirmation to them.
- Order confirmations – In WooCommerce, your store sends an invoice or receipt when someone buys something.
- Booking confirmations – If you run an appointment or event system, users get confirmation and reminders.
- Password resets – A user forgets their password and gets an email to reset it.
- Account notifications – Sign-ups, logins, role changes, or profile updates.
- Membership or subscription alerts – Renewal reminders, payment failures, or status updates.
Why They’re Critical
Website emails are often:
- Time-sensitive
- Expected by the user
- Business-critical (missed leads, lost sales, confused customers)
If they don’t arrive (or land in spam), it creates confusion, lost trust — and in some cases, lost revenue.
The Problem
Website Email Delivery Has Changed
For the past decade or so setting up a WordPress site and using the default PHP mail() function typically ensured emails worked and traditionally without issue. However, the landscape has evolved considerably and email deliverability has become significantly more stringent.
How Things Have Evolved (2015–2025)
- Spam & Phishing Became a Global Crisis
- Over 90% of all email traffic today is spam or malicious.
- Email providers like Google, Microsoft, and Apple have had to crack down hard.
- As a result, they now strictly require authentication — SPF, DKIM, and DMARC — for any domain that sends email.
2. Authentication Became Mandatory
- In 2024, Google and Yahoo started rejecting emails without proper authentication.
- This means if your website isn’t using a verified email sending service, your contact form messages or order confirmations are likely being blocked entirely or flagged as spam.
3. Inbox Algorithms Got Smarter
- Gmail, Office 365 and others now evaluate sender reputation, engagement, and IP history.
- Emails from unknown or unverified sources (like PHP mail()) are immediately downgraded or filtered out.
4. Hosting Providers Started Restricting Outbound Mail
- Due to security and abuse risks, many web hosts now:
- Throttle or block outgoing mail
- Disable mail() by default
5. Customer Expectations Have Risen
- People expect instant, reliable email delivery.
- Businesses lose trust when users never get a reset link, miss an invoice, or never see their contact form reply.
6. No Authentication = Spam Folder
Emails sent via mail() have no real way to prove they’re authorized to be sent from your domain. Without proper authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), email services like Gmail, Outlook, or Apple Mail often mark them as:
- Spam
- Phishing
- Or block them completely
7. Shared Hosting IP Reputation
If your site is hosted on a shared server, you’re using the same mail IP as dozens or hundreds of other websites. If even one of those sites is compromised or flagged for spamming:
- Your emails get blacklisted too
- Your email delivery suffers
8. No Tracking or Visibility
When you use PHP mail:
- You don’t know if the email was delivered
- You don’t know if it bounced
- You don’t know if the recipient’s server blocked it
There’s no feedback loop, so troubleshooting is a guessing game.
9. Throttling and Limits
Many hosts rate-limit or outright block PHP mail to prevent spam abuse. That means:
- Emails might get delayed
- Or not sent at all
- Or fail silently with no notification
The Current Landscape
Over the past 12–18 months, we’ve seen a sharp rise in email deliverability issues across our client base. Ensuring reliable delivery of website notification emails is no longer optional — it’s essential.
Most of our clients now depend on their websites to send important messages like contact form submissions, order confirmations, password resets, and more. Up until now, we’ve handled SMTP setups on a case-by-case basis. But that approach can be clunky, time-consuming, and challenging for clients with varying levels of technical experience.
If your site is still using the default PHP mail function, there’s a strong chance your emails are getting lost, blocked, or landing in spam folders — and you may not even know it.
Website email is no longer just a background feature — it’s a core part of your digital infrastructure, just like payments, analytics, or hosting. It deserves the same level of reliability and attention.
That’s why we’re rolling out a standardised, fully managed SMTP service to ensure every client has access to secure, dependable, and professional-grade email delivery — without the hassle.
The Solution
Introducing Avenue De Saxe’s Managed SMTP Service
We’re excited to announce that Avenue De Saxe is now offering a fully managed SMTP email delivery service — available as an optional add-on to your hosting plan.
By switching to an authenticated external SMTP service, you:
- Sign emails cryptographically (SPF/DKIM), so inboxes trust them
- Use IPs with high sender reputations
- Avoid deliverability issues from your web host
What’s included:
- External SMTP service setup and management
- SPF, DKIM & DMARC DNS configuration for your domain
- Send up to 3,000 emails per month (via your website)
- Delivery monitoring and error troubleshooting
- Integration with WordPress, WooCommerce, Gravity Forms, etc.
Backed by MailerSend’s infrastructure, this service ensures your website emails such as contact form submissions, order confirmations, password resets, and system notifications arrive successfully in your users’ inboxes, not their spam folders.
Pricing
$10/month per domain ex GST — billed annually ($120 ex GST per year – this will be added to your existing hosting plan).
No setup fees. Just peace of mind.