Using Mailgun to Send Emails from your Website

By Robin Sowell · April 13, 2021 · Read in 55 seconds.

Mailgun’s SMTP Relay service is a quick an easy way to have ExpressionEngine transactional emails handled through a dedicated email provider. There’s just one tiny glitch you need to be aware of. The line ending setting needs to be changed from the default \n to \r\n. That’s it. Everything else is self-evident. But in case it’s not…

In your Mailgun account, go to the Overview for your domain. In my case, I just have their default sandbox domain. You’re going to select ‘SMTP’ as your mail option and the required settings, including username and password, will be revealed.

Go to your ‘Settings- Outgoing Email’ settings in your ExpressionEngine control panel and enter your Mailgun settings

Setting	Value
Protocal	SMTP
Newline Character	\r\n
Server Address	smtp.mailgun.org
Server Port	587
Connection Type	STARTTLS

Save your settings and send a few test emails from the Communicate page.

Robin Sowell

Robin got involved with EllisLab in 2002, using pMachine Pro to build a personal site. Since then, her casual interest has grown into an obsession and she enjoys nothing more than seeing what new…

Comments 3

April 16, 2021

harthouse

Hi Robin, Thanks for the article. May I send email marketing campaigns with this method? If not, how can I send email campaigns within ee with the custom HTML email templates? Thanks, Chris

May 3, 2021

No, ExpressionEngine removed the mailing list module quite a while back, as we decided that this was something much better handled by software that specializes in email- such as mailgun.

So- Mailgun to handle your mailing list? Good option. EE to manage the list and send via Mailgun API? Better to do it all in Mailgun (or your choice of service).

> how can I send email campaigns within ee with the custom HTML email templates?

I wouldn’t. I’d have a sign up form where they can sign up for your newsletter/mailing list/etc. But I’d handle the mail aspects outside of ExpressionEngine.

September 16, 2021

Marie

Hi Robin,

I came across your article on Using Mailgun to Send Emails from your Website It was detailed and easy to follow at the same time.

I would like to share another option for a SMTP relay service that offers a reliable option that your readers can try for free. This tool can be found at https://www.socketlabs.com/smtp-relay-service/

If you find our SMTP service useful we would love for you to link to us in your article or consider SocketLabs in the future as an offering for your audience.

Thank you for considering SocketLabs for your SMTP solutions.

Marie Twist SocketLabs