First of all, why it matters
Form notifications and user login emails (e.g. password reset emails and 2FA codes) are an important part of having a functional website. However, most hosting providers aren’t set up to ensure emails get where they need to go.
When this is the case, emails get caught in spam or aren’t routed properly. While some users try to overcome this with Gmail or Outlook, they often run into sending limits or they change their password and service becomes disconnected.
Transactional email success
We want your clients’ websites to succeed, and that means doing everything we can to make sure important email notifications get where they need to go.
Postmark
We’ve used Postmark for transactional WordPress emails for years, and this trusted service has proven to be worthwhile again and again.
During care plan onboarding for your clients’ sites, we ensure that the website domain is properly set up for sending, a server is set up for the client, and then we configure PostSMTP to connect to the Postmark server.
In the case of an issue with email deliverability or sending, Postmark has detailed logs that allow us to track down what the issue is.
Issues once Postmark is being used are rare; we only see about 1–2 a year across all our clients.
In 2025, Postmark changed their pricing model. Here’s how we’re approaching it:
- For our existing partners, we recommend keeping your existing accounts active with the grandfathered pricing.
- For new partners, we will use Valerian’s Postmark account for your clients when they sign up for hosting to take advantage of our grandfathered pricing.
PostSMTP plugin
While Postmark does have their own plugin for WordPress, we prefer PostSMTP. Not only does this plugin connect to Postmark, it also offers connections to many other service providers, so if a client moves on from our hosting/care plan, they can easily connect to another service!
We also leverage PostSMTP’s webhook notification for our care plan monitoring. This sends an alert to our team whenever there is a connection issue with Postmark or other local delivery issues. Clients can get ahead of the problem before they lose out on leads or important communications.