SendPaw Mail

SendPaw Mail makes WordPress email actually arrive. It replaces WordPress’s default mail sending (wp_mail()) with delivery through SendPaw, so your transactional email — order confirmations, user registrations, password resets, contact-form notifications — reaches the inbox instead of the spam folder.

You can send using either of two independent methods, whichever suits your host:

• HTTP API — a Bearer token calls SendPaw’s REST endpoint directly. Fastest, and less likely to be blocked by hosting firewalls.
• SMTP — a real username and password over the standard SMTP protocol.

The HTTP API and SMTP are two different protocols with their own separate credentials — pick either one as your primary sending method, with optional automatic fallback from API to SMTP if the API call fails.

Features:

• Two independent sending methods: HTTP API (Bearer token) or SMTP (username + password).
• SMTP credentials work like any standard SMTP server — they aren’t tied to the API key, so the SMTP settings also work with SMTP providers other than SendPaw.
• Optional automatic fallback to SMTP if the API call fails.
• Every send is capped at 10 seconds total (across the API attempt and the SMTP fallback combined), so a slow or unreachable mail server can only add a few seconds to the page that triggered the email, never minutes — this is what prevents 504 Gateway Timeout errors on checkout, registration, contact forms, etc.
• Automatically overrides the “From” address for all WordPress emails.
• Send a test email directly from the settings page.

Note: SendPaw is a self-hosted service, so you’ll need to enter the hostname of your own SendPaw instance (there is no single shared hostname for all users).

External services

This plugin connects to SendPaw, an external transactional email service, to deliver the email your WordPress site sends. Sending mail through SendPaw is the entire purpose of the plugin, so it cannot work without contacting that service. Nothing is sent until you have entered your own credentials on the Settings > SendPaw Mail screen.

1. SendPaw email API (https://sendpaw.com/api/v1/email)

Used to deliver your WordPress email when the sending method is set to “HTTP API”. Every time WordPress sends an email (order confirmation, user registration, password reset, contact-form notification, or the test email you trigger from the settings screen), the plugin makes one HTTPS request to this endpoint containing: your API key (as a Bearer token), the sender name and address you configured, the recipient addresses, the subject, the message body, and any attachments passed to wp_mail(). No data is sent when no email is being sent.

2. SendPaw SMTP server (the host you enter under “SMTP host”)

Used to deliver your WordPress email when the sending method is set to “SMTP”, or as the automatic fallback when an API send fails. The same message data listed above (sender, recipients, subject, body, attachments) is transmitted over an authenticated, encrypted SMTP connection using the SMTP username and password you entered. These SMTP settings are provider-agnostic: if you point them at a non-SendPaw SMTP server, the mail goes to that server instead and SendPaw is not contacted.

3. SendPaw account API (https://sendpaw.com/api/v1/...), optional

Only used if you click “Connect to SendPaw” or after you have connected. The connect flow opens SendPaw in your browser to authorise this site (protected by a one-time state value plus PKCE) and, on approval, receives a send-only API key that is saved in your settings. While connected, the settings screen requests your account summary (remaining email credits and the list of your sending domains and their verification status) so it can display them in the sidebar. Your site URL is sent as part of the connect request so the created key can be identified. This is not used at all if you enter an API key manually.

Service provider: SendPaw (https://sendpaw.com). Terms of Service: https://sendpaw.com/terms Privacy Policy: https://sendpaw.com/privacy

Note: SendPaw can also be self-hosted. If you define the SENDPAW_API_HOST constant in wp-config.php, or point the SMTP host at your own server, the requests described above go to that instance instead of sendpaw.com, and that operator’s terms apply.