WordPress Newsletter Plugin Wysija (Mail Poet(free)) and Mailchimp’s Mandrill (free)

Send with a professional SMTP provider

*Required:  Login information for your hosting account, A Mandrill account (free), Installation of the Wysija Plugin to your WordPress website

(This may take a few hours to a couple of days to work!  Be patient!)

So far, I have not been able to get this plugin working with Bluehost and Mandrill, it does, however, work with Elasticemail.com. You are limited to 50 free emails per day and pay up front for credits starting as low as $4.98 ($1.00 per thousand emails offered).  https://elasticemail.com/

Get a free Professional SMTP Provider with Mandrill

Install and Activate Wysija plugin through WordPress.

Setup a Mandrill account here: https://mandrill.com/signup/

Logged into Mandrill, Click on “Get SMTP Credentials”.  Here you will find:

• Host (smtp.mandrillapp.com)
• Port (587)
• SMTP Username (usually the email address you signed up with)
• Password (see below and image reference on right)

To get your Password, Click on “+ New API Key” – the code generated is your PASSWORD

Adding DKIM and SPF settings to your DNS Zone Editor

In your cpanel within your hosting account (this tutorial uses Bluehost), select your domain (this may or may not be an option) and enter the credentials found in Mandrill under “Sending Domains”, “DKIM Settings”.

You will have to do 2 things:

• Add or Create a new  SPF record

• Add a TXT record

Adding an SPF record:

Look at your txt files and check to see if there is a Host Record with the name “@”.

If you already have a TXT record with SPF information, you’ll need to add Mandrill’s servers to that record by adding include:spf.mandrillapp.com in the record (before the last operator, which is usually ?all,~all, or -all).

If you do not already have a TXT record with SPF information, you’ll need to add a new record to your DNS (see photo).

• Host Record: @
• TTL: leave as is
• Type: TXT
• TXT Value: v=spf1 include:spf.mandrillapp.com ?all

Adding a DNS TXT (DKIM) record:

• Host Record:  mandrill._domainkey.yourdomain.com  (enter your domain name instead of “yourdomain.com”
• TTL: leave as is
• Type: TXT
• TXT Value: copy from Mandrill DKIM settings

Need more help?  Go to http://help.mandrill.com/entries/22030056-how-do-i-add-dns-records-for-my-sending-domains

Test Your DNS Settings inside Mandrill (button on right in  “Sending Domains”).

Enter those settings (above) into your Wysija plugin settings in the “Send With…” tab using the “Third Party” (Send with a professional SMTP provider) option.

It may take a few hours to a couple of days for these settings to work.

Use the “Send a test email” button and check your email account.

If everything works, you are ready to begin sending emails!