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Configure an SMTP Server for Email Notifications

Zuora

Configure an SMTP Server for Email Notifications

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Configuring your own SMTP server is an add-on feature. Contact Zuora Sales if you are interested in purchasing it.

You can use your own SMTP server to send email notifications instead of using Zuora's default email server. The benefits for using your own SMTP server include:

  • More control over emails delivered to your customers because messages are sent through your own server
  • Ability to access sent email records through your SMTP server logs
  • No need to whitelist Zuora email servers because messages are sent through your own server

Zuora recommends systems like Pendula (Zuora partner), Amazon SES, Sendgrid, MailJet or Zuora's provided email relay solution that offer larger throughputs on email relay. If you use Google or Microsoft email relay service, you might reach their service limits with Zuora's bulk invoice, payment and account statement processed notification events. Please refer to Gmail sending limits and Microsoft 365 message rate limits and throttling for details.

Prerequisites

  • Ensure that a valid email address is entered in the Email field in your tenant profile (Administration Settings > Manage Tenant Profile). The email address is used as the mail.from value for notifications.
  • Make sure your SMTP server relay feature is turned on. Otherwise, any emails sent with a mail.from address in the notification that is different from your SMTP server default will fail.
  • If you use the Gmail SMTP server, you might need to generate an application-specific password for your account. Otherwise, you will get an error against the invalid password.

 

Configure Your SMTP Server

  1. Navigate to Administration Settings > External SMTP.

    Example SMTP Server Configuration
  2. Click edit in the External SMTP Server Configuration Settings section and complete the configuration fields.
  3. Click test connection and save when the fields are complete.
    The data is saved if the connection is successful. If an error occurs, the configuration information is not valid and an error message appears.
  4. Click edit in the first section of the page, and select External SMTP Server.

Configuration Fields

The following table provides descriptions of the configuration fields and indicates whether they are required. The section that follows this table provides example configurations.

Field Required? Description

SMTP Server Name

Required

Host name of your SMTP server.

SMTP Port

Required

The port that Zuora uses to connect to the SMTP server.

SMTP Authentication

Optional

Set to true if the SMTP server requires a user name and password.

Default is false.

SMTP Enable StartTLS

Optional

Set to true if the SMTP server attempts to upgrade to an encrypted connection (TLS or SSL) before authentication.

Default is false.

SMTP User Name

Required only if SMTP Authentication is true

Your user name for the SMTP server.

 

SMTP Password

Required only if SMTP Authentication is true

Your password for the SMTP server.

SMTP SocketFactory Port

Required only if you specify the SMTP SocketFactory Class

If specified, Zuora uses this port to send email to the SMTP server. Otherwise, Zuora uses the SMTP Port.

SMTP SocketFactory Class

Optional

Set to javax.net.ssl.SSLSocketFactory if the SMTP server uses this class to create SSL sockets.

SMTP SocketFactory Fallback

Optional

Set to true if the SMTP server tries to create a socket using a different class if the specified SMTP SocketFactory Class fails.

Default is true.

Example Configurations

The following table provides example configurations for some common SMTP email servers.

Field Example Configurations
Gmail SendGrid Amazon SMTP Office 365

SMTP Server
Name

 smtp.gmail.com smtp.sendgrid
.net		 email-smtp
.us-east-1
.amazonaws.com		 supteam.smtp
.com		 smtp.office365
.com

SMTP Port

 587 465 465 25 587

SMTP
Authentication

 true true true true true

SMTP Enable StartTLS

 true true true true true

SMTP User
Name

 Your Username Your Username
 		 Your Username
 		 Your Username
 		 Your Username
 

SMTP
Password

 Your Password Your Password Your Password Your Password Your Password

SMTP
SocketFactory
Port

 587 465 465 N/A N/A

SMTP
SocketFactory
Class

 javax.net.ssl.SSLSocketFactory javax.net.ssl.
SSLSoketFactory		 javax.net.ssl.
SSLSoketFactory		 N/A N/A

SMTP
SocketFactory Fallback

 true true false N/A N/A

Common Error Messages

After entering your SMTP server configuration details and clicking test connection and save, you may get an error message. The following table provides some common error messages and actions you can take to resolve the issue.

Error Message Recommended Action

Unknown SMTP host

Check that the SMTP Server Name is correct.

Could not connect to SMTP host

Check that the SMTP Port is correct. If the port is correct, the SMTP server might be experiencing a temporary issue. Wait a few minutes and try again.

Connect timed out

Authentication failed: Bad username / password

Check that your SMTP User Name and SMTP Password are correct.

Authentication failed

Check that SMTP Authentication is set to true. If you still get this error message, check that your SMTP User Name and SMTP Password are correct.

Authentication required

Check that SMTP Authentication is set to true.

Read timed out

Check that you have entered the correct values for the following fields:

  • SMTP SocketFactory Port
  • SMTP SocketFactory Class
  • SMTP SocketFactory Fallback

Could not convert socket to TLS