UPDATE: since Mandrill service is no longer available for a reasonable price, we now recommend to use Mailgun instead. Here's an updated post on how to use Mailgun with Joomla.
Having problems delivering email from your site? Bookings not arriving to your customers or hotels? If your email is getting bounced or it is delivered in the spam folder, your server IP may have been added to a spam black list.
Every day thousands of websites get hacked, especially those based on Joomla and Wordpress that have insecure administrator passwords. When hackers gain control of a site, it begins to act as a part of zombie networks, trying to hack other websites, and sending thousands of spam messages per hour. Once a compromised website is detected by anti-spam systems, the server IP is added to black-lists and all the websites in the server are banned.
This problem is getting more common everyday. If your website has this kind of problems, you only need to change your Joomla configuration to use an external SMTP mail server. With this configuration, the emails sent by your website will not be delivered using your server, avoiding email delivery problems.
You can use any SMTP server to send emails from Joomla (such as GMail), but we recommend to use Mandrill because it’s a free service (for low email volumes) and has been specially designed for this purpose.
Mandrill configuration in Joomla
What you need to do first is sign up at Mandrill and get your API credentials that can be used with SMTP too. The process is easy and straightforward.
Once you get the credentials log in to your Joomla administrator, and navigate to System => Global Configuration. In the “Server” tab you will find the “Mail Settings” options. Use this configuration:
- Mailer: SMTP
- From email: your site’s email (like This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
- From Name: your site’s name (like My Site)
- SMTP Authentication: Yes
- SMTP Security: None
- SMTP Port: 587
- SMTP Username: your registration email to Mandrill
- SMTP Password: a Mandrill API Key
- SMTP Host: smtp.mandrillapp.com
Save the configuration and make some tests (you can use Users=>Mass Mail Users to test Joomla email settings). You will se how your mails are correctly delivered again.
Furthermore, you will be able to access Mandrill stats and useful information about your site email delivery. You will never loose bookings again, and will be able to know if the emails have been delivered at any time!
