In this article, we'll explain how to find your SMTP settings for the various email providers, and what these different settings mean. You can use this information to send emails through your mail server - whether that's for email deliverability testing with Schrodinbox, or other software, like your website and email campaign tools.
What is an SMTP server?
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is the standard sending protocol for email across the internet. At a high level, it is the process by which emails are relayed between servers to reach a mailbox. It's only used to send mail; if you want to receive email, you'd need to use POP or IMAP. We go into all the details in our post What is SMTP?.
If you're looking to connect up your mailbox, it can help to know what each of the settings mean.
- SMTP Hostname: Also known as the SMTP Server Address. This is the address for your email provider's server, eg.
smtp.mail.com. - Port Number: A specified port that the SMTP server will listen for new connections on. This will be one of 465, 587 or 25. For the main providers, we'll recommend the best option; in general you want to be using either 465 or 587.
- Username: The username you'd use to log in to your email provider.
- Password: This is the password used to log in to your email provider. For some of the big providers, this isn't the same as your normal password, and instead is an "app password". We'll explain more about this below.
- Security: There are two availble protocols for encrypted traffic over SMTP: SSL and TLS. TLS is the best option for security, and should be chosen where available.
In the table below, you'll see the settings for the largest providers.
| Provider | SMTP Hostname | Port Number | Security | App Password? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gmail | smtp.gmail.com | 587 | TLS | Yes |
| Outlook | smtp-mail.outlook.com | 587 | STARTTLS / TLS | Yes |
If you don't see yours mentioned here, and aren't sure where to find it in their settings, drop us an email at team@schrodinbox.com and we'd be happy to help!
App Passwords
Several of the large email providers (Gmail, Outlook etc) require you to use an "App Password" if they support two-factor authentication (2FA); this is a long, randomly-generated string which can be used to log into other "apps" (services that connect to the provider) which aren't using the 2FA scheme they support. SMTP as a protocol doesn't support 2FA, which is why it needs to use the app password to connect.
For more detailed information, see the documentation below for Google and Microsoft:
Below you'll find the provider-specific instructions on how to set up your app password.