Option #1: Send emails from your Webhost's Email SMTP Server.
You can setup your emails in DAP (welcome email, broadcasts, autoresponders etc).
DAP will connect to your webhost's email SMTP server to send out these emails. No special configuration required. It's the default setting in DAP.
This will work fine if you've a dedicated or a VPS account but on a shared hosting platform where your server is shared by other websites, if your server gets blacklisted due to activities from the other websites that are out of your control, your site's email deliverability will be impacted.
So if you're on a shared hosting platform, consider option #2 or option #3 for better email deliverablity.
Option #2: Connect DAP to a 3rd party SMTP server.
You can setup your emails in DAP (welcome email, broadcasts, autoresponders etc).
In DAP's Email >> SMTP page, you can connect DAP to 3rd party email smtp services like Amazon SES, AuthSMTP, Mailgun or Sendgrid.
When you use this option, DAP will send emails via the configured 3rd party SMTP server and bypass your webhost's SMTP server.
If you do this and emails do not get delivered, here are the things to look out for:
- Make sure the credentials are correct (server name, port, userid, password etc) in DAP admin >> Email >> SMTP page.
- Whitelist the From Email (that you've in dap admin >> setup >> config page) in your SMTP Provider.
- Check with your webhost to make sure they are not blocking outbound connections to the port you've configured in DAP email >> smtp page.
Option #3: Connect DAP to your Email Marketing Platform
You can connect DAP to an advanced email marketing platform, like ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, Drip, Aweber etc and use those systems to send your emails, track stats, segment emails using tags etc. Basically use these email platforms for advanced email marketing and automations and connect it to your membership platform powered by DAP.
You can configure DAP to automatically add subscribers to your email platform and send out your email broadcasts and follow-up emails from these platforms.
Please note: DAP is NOT an email server. DAP can only trigger the sending of email. It uses one of the 3 options I mentioned above to send the emails.