WordPress create amazing websites easily.

Again, advanced features like Multi-site helps to access all your websites under one WordPress installation.

But, users often confuse with WP mail SMTP multisite settings. This is a plugin to integrate different email account under one WordPress.

At Bobcares, we often get requests from customers to set up “WP mail SMTP multisite” as part of our Technical Support Services.

Let’s see how our Support Engineers configure WP mail SMTP multisite correctly.

Understanding WordPress Multisite and mail SMTP in detail

First, let’s understand what WordPress multisite means.

It’s simply nothing, but an advanced feature of WordPress that allows users to create multiple blogs and websites from a single WordPress installation.

With multisite, users get quick access to several blogs with one username and password that makes them more convenient to use.

Have you ever thought how emails are sent from multisite?

This is where the WP Mail SMTP for multisite plays an important role. This is a plugin that allows users to configure SMTP mail on WordPress Multisite for sending emails.

Instead of using different SMTP plugins for different email providers like (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, etc), WP mail SMTP plugin brings all in one.

This is how  WP Mail SMTP makes one of the best SMTP solutions for WordPress multisite.

Using WP mail SMTP in multisite

For a single site, customers find it easy to install and configure WP mail SMTP. But, it’s confusing when it comes to multisite.

Recently, one of our customers approached us finding it difficult to set up WP mail SMTP multisite.

Let’s see how our Technical Engineers executed to fix the problem by the following steps below.

1. First of all, we logged in to the WordPress admin dashboard.

2. We searched for WP mail SMTP under the Plugins section.

3. Now, plugins like WP Mail SMTP and Easy WP SMTP appears in the search list. Since WP Mail SMTP is one of the most popular and widely used plugins. We installed and activated WP mail SMTP.

4. After the successful completion, we then checked the settings of WP mail SMTP and gave the correct values in the respective columns such as:

From Email – The email address from which you send emails.

From Name – The name that appears when sending emails.

Mailer – We choose ‘Other SMTP‘

5. Also, we always ensure that Authentication is on before saving the settings.

This above-mentioned setting is the same for both single and multisite in WordPress.

6. Finally, in addition, to enable SMTP multisite we added the following settings in the wp-config.php configuration file.

define('WPMS_ON', true);
define('WPMS_MAIL_FROM', 'user@domain.com');
define('WPMS_MAIL_FROM_NAME', 'My WordPress Multisite');
define('WPMS_MAILER', 'smtp'); 
define('WPMS_SET_RETURN_PATH', false); 
define('WPMS_SMTP_HOST', 'smtp.gmail.com'); 
define('WPMS_SMTP_PORT', 587); 
define('WPMS_SSL', 'tls'); 
define('WPMS_SMTP_AUTH', true); 
define('WPMS_SMTP_USER', 'user@domain.com'); 
define('WPMS_SMTP_PASS', 'yourpassword');

7. Also, we ensure to take back up of the configuration file before editing. This helps us to restore the data in case of some database failure.

This is how our Technical Team set up WP mail SMTP in WordPress multisite. And, all blogs use the same email address.

However, it is possible to set up each blog under multisite to use its own email address too.

How we fixed the issue with WP mail SMTP multisite

Similarly, another customer approached us with the issue that emails sent from multisite failed. Even though they have activated WP mail SMTP multisite, they faced this problem. But, emails sent from the parent domain works properly. Also, when sending from the child website. it results in “550: SMTP server error Access denied“.

Let’s see how our Technical Engineers figured it out.

1. Initially, we checked the log “/var/log/mail.log” to verify if “550: SMTP server error Access denied” occurs.

2. We knew that this error happens when the SMTP server blocks IP.

3. By checking, we found that the user’s IP was blocked on the server.

4. Finally, we unblocked the IP address on the server firewall. Thus, the problem was solved and the customer could send emails properly.

[Finding trouble in configuring SMTP in WordPress multisite? We’ll fix it for you.]

Conclusion

In short, “WP mail SMTP multisite” provide options to specify different email accounts for each blog or a common email account for all WordPress sites. Today, we saw how our Support Engineers set up “WP mail SMTP multisite” for our customers and fix related problems.