What are the advantages/disadvantages of sending mail via SMTP instead of local mail ?

Question

Seeing the "send mail via SMTP" option in admin panel, i am wondering what this is for and what impact this option has on Q2a ?
thank you !

Answer 1

Normally if the local mail works for you you should not bother.  The From: address for outgoing mail in this case will be something like no-reply@yourq2aserver.com .

First reason to use SMTP is if you want to use the different From: address, like your google mail for example. In this case using local mail sever will result in your mails marked as spam by most spam-filters (they compare the From header and the real server that sent the mail)

The second reason is if you have lots of users and need to send lots of mails (say, more than a hundred per day). In this case, your server may be marked as spam source and besides it will be unnesessarily loaded. Using sendgrid or similar external mail server is a solution.

Comments

I'm not being able to set up my SMTP mail properly... do you guys have any step by step instruction?
Also what is the username that it asks for? is the 'no-reply@....' ?

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Most often it's either your username or full@email.com. It depends on the SMTP provider. But there are other settings too. For instance for Gmail it should be something like this: http://email.about.com/od/accessinggmail/f/Gmail_SMTP_Settings.htm
So if you are not sure then consult your mail provider, they always have a similar article on the topic.

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I got it working now, thanks anyway. yeah the username was the email "no-reply@..." and its password, that was what I was trying to understand.