⭐ Premium
The Email Settings screen controls how Church Admin sends emails — both individual transactional emails (password resets, donation receipts, birthday greetings) and bulk emails sent to groups of people. Getting email configured correctly is one of the most important setup steps, as almost every other module depends on it.
Go to Church Admin → Communications → Email settings. You need the Bulk Email permission level to change these settings. See Permissions and roles.
A Send test email button is available at the top and bottom of the screen — use it after making any changes to confirm emails are reaching inboxes correctly.
Transactional vs bulk email
Church Admin separates emails into two categories, and you can configure a different sending method for each:
- Transactional email — emails sent to one person at a time: registration confirmations, password resets, donation receipts, birthday and anniversary emails, schedule reminders. These are time-sensitive and need to arrive reliably.
- Bulk email — emails sent to a group of people at once from the Communications module. These may involve hundreds of recipients and need a method that can handle volume without being rate-limited or flagged as spam.
Sending methods
Both transactional and bulk email offer the same four method options:
Native WordPress email
Uses WordPress’s built-in mail function, which in turn uses your web server’s mail capability. This is the simplest option and requires no additional accounts or API keys. However, many shared hosting providers limit how many emails can be sent per hour, and emails sent this way often land in spam folders. If your hosting provider has disabled the mail() function entirely this option won’t appear.
Best for: small churches on reliable hosting with low email volumes.
Mailersend
A dedicated email delivery service with a “hobby” pricing tier — 5,000 emails per month for $75.5- per year. Mailersend handles both transactional and bulk email reliably and is the recommended option for most churches. You’ll need a Mailersend account and an API key. See How to set up Mailersend.
When Mailersend is selected, email queueing settings are hidden — Mailersend handles rate limiting on its own.
Brevo
Another dedicated email delivery service — free up to 300 emails per day. Requires a Brevo account, API key, and your domain name. See Brevo email service.
SMTP server
Send through your own SMTP server — your church’s email account at Gmail, Outlook, or your hosting provider. Requires SMTP credentials (see below). Note that Gmail accounts require an App Password rather than your regular Gmail password — see the link on the settings screen for instructions.
Default sender details
Two fields set the default sender for all emails sent by Church Admin:
- Default from email — the email address that appears in the From field. This should be an address you control and that is associated with your domain — using a personal Gmail address here can increase the chance of emails being flagged as spam.
- Default from name — the name shown as the sender — for example St Andrew’s Church. Individual email templates (birthday emails, registration emails, and so on) can override this with their own from name if needed.
SMTP settings
If you select SMTP server as your sending method, or if you want WordPress-generated emails (password resets etc.) to use a reliable SMTP route even when using Mailersend or Brevo for Church Admin emails, fill in the SMTP settings:
- SMTP Host — your mail server address, for example
smtp.gmail.comorsmtp.mailersend.net - SMTP Authorisation required — tick this for most providers
- SMTP Port — typically 587 for TLS or 465 for SSL
- SMTP Username — usually your email address
- SMTP Password — your email password or app password
- SMTP Security — SSL or TLS depending on your provider’s requirements
If you are using Mailersend, a button appears to automatically fill in the Mailersend SMTP settings — use this for WordPress-generated emails so everything goes through the same reliable route.
Email queueing
If you are using native WordPress email or SMTP and your hosting limits how many emails can be sent per hour, use the queueing settings to spread bulk emails over time rather than sending them all at once. This section is hidden when using Mailersend or Brevo since those services handle rate limiting automatically.
- Send immediately — sends all emails at once. Use this only if your hosting has no email rate limits.
- WP Cron — uses WordPress’s built-in scheduled task system to send a batch of emails every hour. Choose this if you’re on Windows hosting or aren’t comfortable with server cron jobs. Set the maximum emails per hour to stay within your hosting limit.
- Server Cron — uses a Linux server cron job for more reliable scheduling. Church Admin provides the cron command to add to your cPanel or hosting account. A PDF of instructions is available from the settings screen. Set the maximum emails per hour to stay within your hosting limit.
Saving and testing
Click Save at the bottom of the screen. A confirmation message appears with a Send test email link — always send a test email after changing settings to confirm everything is working before your next bulk send or automated email goes out.