Introduction

Welcome to another part of our WHMCS General Settings tutorial. This tutorial will review another tab from the General Settings, namely, the “Mail” tab. Emails are an inseparable part of your business. Setting them up properly will ensure not only a higher deliverability rate but also higher transparency with your customers, as they will be informed regularly about promotions, invoices, and payment confirmations.

Of course, WHMCS has plenty of configuration choices under the General Settings, and we will examine them in the rest of our WHMCS tutorials in the series.

Getting Started

To access the General Settings, please log inside your WHMCS admin area. After you log in, please point your attention to the top right corner. There you will see the wrench icon. Please click on it, and then click on the "System Settings" option from the revealed icons. 

This action will redirect you to the "System Settings" page, where you will see all the available WHMCS settings. 

To access the "General Settings," please click on the "General Settings" content box, which will be the first option under the "All Settings" title.

Mail Tab

To access the "Mail" tab, please click on the "Mail" tab on the right side of the "Domains" tab. It will contain settings that dictate how your emails and messages function in WHMCS.

Let's analyze each setting individually to understand them better.

• Mail Provider/Type - This configuration option will depend on your WHMCS version. In WHMCS version 8.0 - you will see the "Mail Provider" option, while in WHMCS 7.0, you will see the "Mail Type" option. As we are writing this tutorial, WHMCS 8.0 is the most up-to-date and stable version, we will review the "Mail Provider" variant. To set up an email provider for WHMCS, please click the "Configure Mail Provider" button to the right of the "Mail Provider" configuration option. By doing so, you will generate a pop-up window with two settings additional settings:
• Mail Provider - Please use this drop-down menu to select your mail provider. The options will be four:
• PHP Mail(default) - Please leave this option selected to enable WHMCS to use the PHP mail() function. This option is always a poor choice, as PHP mail() is often associated with spam. There is a huge chance your message may never reach the recipient's folder and land in spam. If you are hosting your WHMCS installation with HostArmada, this option will not work, as we have disabled the PHP mail() globally on our servers to prevent spam-oriented behavior. SMTP is far more reliable, and due to our SpamExperts outbound filter, it will secure you a 99.9% delivery rate on all outgoing messages. Don't hesitate to get in touch with our technical support team so they can help you set up SMTP configuration. 
• SMTP - The SMTP mail protocol is reliable for sending messages, especially if you use HostArmada's email service. What you need to achieve this is the SMTP username/password, the correct SMTP port, and the SMTP hostname. If you are hosting your WHMCS installation with HostArmada, please reach our technical support team over the ticketing system or our LiveChat representatives to receive your credentials.
• MailGun - Please use this option if you have purchased a plan from MailGun. Doing so will reveal fields where you must add their API key and the sending domain name.
• SendGrid - Please use this option if you have purchased a plan from SendGrid. Doing so will unveil a text field where you must add their API key.
• SparkPost - Please use this option if you have purchased a plan from SparkPost. Doing so will display a text field where you need to add their API key.
• Mail Encoding - Please use this drop-down menu to select the mail encoding. We recommend using the 8-bit option unless you face an issue with your system character set.
• Disable Email Sending - Please use this toggle switch to enable/disable all outgoing mail from WHMCS. This setting should be enabled if you perform updates or customizations in a staging/test environment or troubleshoot problems related to outgoing messages.
• Disable RFC3834 Headers - Please use this toggle switch to enable/disable the RFC3834 Headers from outgoing emails. Disabling this will prevent constant response circulation between the source and destination if both sides have set up autoresponders.
• Global Email Signature - Please use this content box to append an email signature to all your WHMCS emails that contain the {$signature} field. You can also use HTML to style your signature.
• Global Email CSS Styling - Please use this content box to enter the CSS code used to stylize all your WHMCS emails.
• Client Email Header Content - Please use this content box to edit the headers (the content at the top of messages) sent by WHMCS. You can also use HTML to style your header.
• Client Email Footer Content - Please use this content box to edit the footer (the content at the bottom of messages) sent by WHMCS. You can also use HTML to style your footer.
• System Emails From Name - Please use this content box to hardcode the name displayed on all emails your agents send using WHMCS. These messages will include the Cron Job Activity emails, Order Notification emails, and Automation Success/Failed emails.
• System Emails From Email - Please use this content box to define the email address that will appear on all messages sent to agents using WHMCS. A good example is [email protected].
• BCC Messages - Please use this text field to set an email address that will receive a copy of all emails sent by WHMCS.
• Presales Form Destination - Please use this drop-down menu to select a department that will receive all emails sent via customers using the pre-sales contact form.
• Presales Contact Form Email - Please use this text field to define the email address that will receive all customer emails using the pre-sales contact form.

Once you have chosen the desired settings on this page, please click on the blue “Save Changes” button located at the bottom of the page. Otherwise, please click the grey “Cancel Changes” button on the right side of it to revert them.

This covers all the configurations under the WHMCS “Mail” tab. Hopefully, you found our explanations helpful and applied some of our suggestions within this tab to improve how your WHMCS sends emails.

Conclusion

Please follow our next tutorial in line, which will go through the “Support” tab. It includes settings related to WHMCS’s support system used by your agents and customers to communicate.