Email delivery is an important part of any eCommerce store, especially digital eCommerce where the email receipts contain download links to the purchased files. Email delivery is also, unfortunately, one of the most common aspects of eCommerce to be unreliable.
This is due to many factors, including low-end hosting accounts, spam filters, and outdated email servers. Thankfully, there are a number of solutions to making email delivery nearly 100% reliable so that you can be assured email receipts, sale notifications, product submissions, and all other emails are delivered reliably.
Most hosting companies provide basic services for email delivery, meaning much of the time email is expected to just work. Unfortunately that’s often not the case, especially with lower-end and cheaper hosting accounts. There are several problems that frequently occur with hosting-included email delivery:
Low sending limits, sometimes less than 250-500 emails per month
Slow email processing, resulting in delayed delivery
Poor support for modern HTML emails, resulting in frequent delivery failures
Overly aggressive spam filters, resulting in emails getting improperly flagged as spam
Shared email servers, meaning other accounts with the same company can negatively impact your service
If you discover that email delivery is not working reliably on your store, it could be due to one of these common factors. Even when email delivery is working reliably, it is still a good idea to consider using a service that is separate from your hosting company to manage email delivery.
The easiest way to resolve email delivery problems is to use a hosted service designed specifically around reliably sending emails.
These services create a connection between your eCommerce store and then all emails are routed through their servers.
Along with provided reliable and consistent email delivery, these services also offer a number of other benefits, including:
Open rate reporting
Delivery rate reporting
Re-send capabilities
Better spam protection
Reputation monitoring
Email authentication
24/7 technical support
When emails, whether they be purchase receipts, sale notifications, or other notifications for your store, are an integral part of your eCommerce site, it’s really important to ensure your emails work.
There are a number of services to choose from, so we’ve put together some of our favorites:
All five of these services include simple WordPress plugins available from the WordPress.org plugins repository that make it exceptionally simple and quick to connect your site to the service.
Email delivery is a common problem, especially in eCommerce. One of the best things you can do for your store’s reputation, day-to-day operations, and your own peace-of-mind is upgrade your site to use a dedicated email delivery service, removing the problem altogether!