XF 2.3 XenForo Email Setup: Is the internal SMTP good enough?

[Robby]

Hi everyone,


I am currently using the internal SMTP for my XenForo forum, but I am wondering if it is just as good as using a dedicated external service in terms of reliability and email deliverability.

It also made me curious: does anyone happen to know what XenForo.com themselves use for their own community emails?

If the general consensus is that a dedicated external service is better, I have a couple of additional questions:


1. SMTP Providers: Which external SMTP provider are you using and why do you recommend them?


2. Guides & Tutorials: Does anyone know of any good, step-by-step guides for setting up specific services with XenForo? I am particularly interested in Amazon SES or Brevo (formerly Sendinblue).


I would love to hear your thoughts and see what the best practice is here. Thanks in advance!

 

[MentaL]

Amazon SES is recommended, imo.

 

[Drac Morbis]

I would love to hear your thoughts and see what the best practice is here. Thanks in advance!

I use internal server mail for all my sites with SMTP auth. I use Plesk and created e-mail accounts for each site. Then I set DKIM, Dmarc, and SPF records in each domain's DNS. I supply my server name, e-mail account name and password, and port 587 with TLS, and it sends e-mail great without the need for any external service like Postmark (which I used to use).

Once all setup, test it with this free site: https://www.mail-tester.com (no affiliation).

If this seems like a lot, feel free to PM me, and I'll assist you further!

 

[Mr Lucky]

2. Guides & Tutorials: Does anyone know of any good, step-by-step guides for setting up specific services with XenForo? I am particularly interested in Amazon SES or Brevo (formerly Sendinblue).

I'm currently trialling Brevo. The setup seems as straitghforward as other other providers except there seems to be more DNS records but I'm not yet sure you need all six of them. It's way simpler than Amazon.

Brevo's own guide is quite good, to set up with xenforo all you need is username, server name port and password. In my test so far works with SSL/TLS (port 465) or without (port 587)

 

[Drac Morbis]

I just switched to Amazon SES for one of my other sites after discovering no e-mail is going to any Microsoft address (this actually affects all my sites I realized)). I get bounce after bounce to every Outlook, Live, and Hotmail address.

The site I'm using it on relies heavily on e-mail so it's important.

It was an extremely technical setup, but once I figured it out, I love it. Just need final approval to go live with it.

 

[Facula]

@Drac Morbis did you use a similar setup procedure to this:

Post in thread 'Amazon SES and Xenforo'

May 8, 2017

@Mouth

Setting up SNS for an SES sending email.

Go into SNS > Topics > Create New Topic



Once created, click on the topic title to enter the subscriptions screen.

Click on Create Subscription > (popup appears) > Select EMAIL as protocol > enter your XF bounce catch-all address



Create subscription will send a confirmation email to the email address that you must quickly catch before XF processes bounce handling, and confirm the email.

Your subscription will now change from pending to enabled.

Go into your SES > click on the XF bounce email address...

• Anthony Parsons

• 

I'm considering using an external provider, my webhost has Postmark available through his account for his domain users for like $5/month but I keep seeing SES being recommended.

I'm particularly interested in how SES handles bounces natively through the XF ACP as I think I read Postmark isn't very good at this.

An no one has mentioned how SES handles the unsubscribe handler.

But basically I think I just wanted to avoid having to deal with all the setup required (DKIM, SPF, etc) as some of those require me to actually ask my webhost to ask the data center his servers are on to configure that, per domain (I don't pretend to understand why).

Also you comment about microsoft emails is on point. Those have always been a major issue, having to train users to whitelist forum emails. And don't get me started about iCloud emails.

 

[Robby]

Using the Brevo HTTP API instead of traditional SMTP offers several major advantages for XenForo, especially when it comes to performance, reliability, and hosting environments:

• No blocked ports on shared hosting: On many shared hosting providers, outbound SMTP ports (such as 25, 465, or 587) are completely blocked or heavily throttled to prevent spam. This frequently leads to broken mail setups, silent connection drops or the need to request custom firewall exceptions. The Brevo API communicates over standard HTTPS (port 443), which is virtually never blocked on shared hosts.
• Significantly faster with lower latency: SMTP requires a multi-step handshake (opening a socket connection, TLS negotiation, authentication credentials exchange, sending multiple commands and closing). In contrast, an API call is a single, lightweight HTTPS POST request. This eliminates noticeable lag and prevents user-facing pages (such as registration, password resets, or replying to watched threads) from hanging while waiting for the mail server to respond.
• Instant, structured error handling: If an email fails due to an invalid recipient, account limit or payload issue, the API immediately returns a structured JSON response and HTTP status code. XenForo can immediately catch, interpret and record the exact issue in the server error log, avoiding the generic connection timeouts often seen with failing SMTP sockets.
• Reliable deliverability & reputation: Routing through Brevo ensures that outgoing forum notifications, activation links and alerts benefit from dedicated deliverability practices, proper SPF/DKIM alignment, and automated bounce handling, keeping important emails out of users' spam folders.

Because of these limitations with standard SMTP on shared hosting, I built a dedicated, lightweight add-on for XenForo that handles mail delivery directly through the Brevo API and it has been working exceptionally well.

 

[Facula]

Brevo, formerly Sendinblue

Looking that up

 

[Drac Morbis]

did you use a similar setup procedure to this:

I used it for a site I built myself with Laravel. Bounce handling, sending, and everything all worked. But my request for production access was denied.