Email: set up SMTP to connect to a custom email server

Summary

Set up SMTP to send portal notifications through an email service like Amazon SES, Sendgrid, or other similar provider.

Availability: all customers on request

Contact your Customer Success Manager to consider if SMTP to a custom email server can help your organization.

Background

See Email deliverability: best practices to avoid email bounces.

LearnUpon must protect all its customers by having a low tolerance for bounced email messages. If one customer generates a lot of bounced email, LearnUpon risks having addresses like notifications@learnupon.com marked as spam, which would affect all customers.

SMTP overview

SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) sends messages to a server for forwarding. The SMTP integration lets organizations manage their own outbound email, including bounces and failed deliveries.

They can access analytics to address soft bounces or undeliverable emails directly with their email provider, rather than going through LearnUpon. Typically, organizations use email providers like Amazon SES or Sendgrid.

The SMTP integration is a valuable tool for organizations that:

• manage large numbers of learners regularly
• create a lot of new accounts through batch user upload or the API
• rely on external sources for learner emails

In these scenarios, customers could exceed LearnUpon’s bounce threshold for reasons outside their control.

Learners don’t see any changes: they continue to get notifications from notifications@learnupon.com, or a custom email address through a white-label URL.

Prerequisites

Your organization must set up a custom email server to send notification emails. Consult your organization’s IT team as required.

You need the email’s server details to complete setup of the SMTP integration in LearnUpon.

Access permissions

• Admins with full portal permissions: can set up the feature

This feature is available for top-level and sub-portals. For sub-portals, you set up the feature on each portal separately as required.

Connect the SMTP integration to your custom email server

All fields on the setup page are required.

LearnUpon uses the test address when you create or change the SMTP details, to confirm the connection is working. Typically you enter an admin address.

You create the Mail from and Reply to addresses in your custom email server, and copy the details here.

1. From main navigation go to Settings > Email > Custom SMTP.
2. Select Use custom SMTP server to access the server settings.
3. As required for your custom server, select:
   • TLS, aka Transport Layer Security
   • Authorization: turning on this setting makes the Security field available
4. Enter the custom server details to connect your portal to your custom server:
   • Host/server
   • Description: an internal reference for your own use
   • Test address
   • Username
   • Password
   • Port
   • Security: select the security protocol for your server from the dropdown list
5. Enter the email sender names and addresses that learners see when they receive email from the custom server.
   • From name: example “LearnUpon notifications”, or “Your Company Name training team”
   • Mail from: example notifications@learnupon.com
   • Reply to name: can be the same as the From name
   • Reply to: can be the same as Mail from
6. Save to finish.

The following screenshot shows Custom SMTP with fields to complete.

See:

• Email deliverability: best practices to avoid email bounces
• Standard LearnUpon-generated emails: overview
• Send notification emails from your own domain