Lean SMTP

Lean SMTP makes WordPress send its mail through a real mail service instead of the host's default PHP mail, which improves deliverability. It is deliberately small: a handful of transports and a handful of settings. Everything is free. There is no pro version, no paid add-ons, no locked features, no account to create, and no upsell banners in the admin. Every mailer, the send log, the failure alerts, WP-CLI, offline mode and encrypted credential storage are all in this plugin, for everyone. Nothing phones home. The plugin sends no telemetry or usage data anywhere, and it makes no network requests other than delivering your mail to the provider you configured. Website: https://leansmtp.com Every provider below also offers plain SMTP, so the SMTP transport alone covers all of them. The API transports exist for hosts that block outbound mail ports (25/465/587), which is common on shared hosting and some managed platforms.

• SMTP: any host/port with TLS, SSL, or no encryption, optional username/password.
• Amazon SES (API): the SES v2 API, signed with a hand-rolled AWS Signature V4 signer, so no AWS SDK is bundled.
• Mailgun (API): US or EU region, sending the message as MIME so attachments and formatting survive untouched.
• Resend (API): a single API key, nothing else to configure.
• Offline: record every message and send nothing, for staging sites that must never mail real customers. wp_mail() still reports success, so plugins behave exactly as they would in production.
• From identity: set the From name and address, and optionally force them over anything another plugin sets.
• Reply-To: a site-wide default for replies, useful when the From address is a no-reply. A Reply-To the message set itself is always kept.
• wp-config.php overrides: pin any setting in code instead of the database, so credentials can live in environment variables and never diverge between environments.
• Failure alerts: an admin notice when mail stops going out, so a broken mailer isn't discovered via missed password resets. It clears itself once mail works again.
• WP-CLI: wp lean-smtp test and wp lean-smtp status.
• Test email: a button on the settings page to confirm your configuration works.
• Send log: optional. Records each send (recipient, subject, result) on an Email Log screen with paging, a status filter, search, and per-row or bulk delete. Stored in your own database and never sent anywhere. The message headers, attachment filenames and body can each be recorded too, behind their own settings and off by default.
• Encrypted secrets: stored passwords and API keys are AES-256 encrypted, keyed to your site salts.

Deliberately not included: Gmail and Microsoft 365 OAuth. Both need an OAuth consent flow, refresh-token storage, and (for Google) app verification. That is more machinery than the rest of this plugin combined. Use an app password or a provider above.

1. Upload the plugin and activate it.
2. Go to Lean SMTP → Settings.
3. Choose a mailer and fill in the connection details.
4. Set your From Email and From Name.
5. Save, then use "Send a Test Email" to confirm it works.

For Amazon SES: create an IAM user limited to ses:SendRawEmail/ses:SendEmail, verify your From address (or domain) in the SES console, and, if your account is still in the SES sandbox, verify the recipient too. For Mailgun: use the sending domain exactly as it appears in your Mailgun dashboard, and pick the region matching the account the key was issued in. A US key is not valid against the EU stack. For Resend: create an API key with send permission and verify your From domain.

0.4.1

• Update dependencies.

0.4.0

• Lean SMTP now has its own top-level admin menu, with Settings and Email Log as separate screens. The old Settings → Lean SMTP address redirects to the new one, so existing bookmarks keep working.
• The send log has moved to a screen of its own and is now a proper list: paging, a status filter (sent / failed / offline) with counts, search by recipient or subject, per-row and bulk delete, and an adjustable rows-per-page. Recorded message content still expands in place under its row.
• Added a log retention setting: keep the newest 100, 500, 1,000 or 5,000 entries. The default is unchanged at 100, and it can be pinned in wp-config.php as LEAN_SMTP_LOG_RETENTION like any other setting.

0.3.1

• Stored passwords and API keys are no longer passed through sanitize_text_field(), which strips characters that are perfectly legal in a credential (angle brackets, percent-encoded sequences) and could leave a saved secret that no longer authenticates. Only control characters are removed now. If your password or API key contains such characters, re-enter it.

0.3.0

• Added an Offline mailer: every message is recorded and nothing is sent, for staging sites that must not mail real customers. wp_mail() still reports success, so other plugins behave as they would in production.
• The send log can now record the message headers, attachment filenames and body. Each is a separate setting and both are off by default, because a stored body contains password-reset links and anything else your site mails. Recorded content is shown in an expandable row in the log viewer, alongside the full error text for a failed send.
• Added a Reply-To setting, applied to both the SMTP and API paths. A Reply-To the message set for itself is always kept.
• The log table is now upgraded in place when the plugin is updated. Previously the table was only ever created on activation, which does not run on update.

0.2.1

• The settings screen's CSS and JavaScript are now enqueued as files on that screen only, instead of being printed inline.
• Each setting is now registered with its own named sanitize callback, with the wp-config.php constant guard applied as a separate filter on top.

0.2.0

• Added a Mailgun transport (US and EU regions), sending the assembled message as MIME.
• Added a Resend transport.
• Bcc recipients on API sends are now carried as an explicit envelope and the Bcc header is stripped from the delivered message, so hidden recipients are never disclosed to other recipients.
• Any setting can now be pinned in wp-config.php as an upper-case constant; a pinned setting renders read-only on the settings page and is left untouched when the form is saved.
• Added an admin notice when a send fails, so a silently broken mailer is noticed. It clears itself after the next successful send.
• Added WP-CLI commands: wp lean-smtp test [<recipient>] and wp lean-smtp status.
• The API transports now share one message assembly behind a Lean_SMTP_Api_Transport interface, so all of them reproduce core's wp_mail() semantics identically.

0.1.1

• Fixed Amazon SES sends failing with an HTTP 403 "signature does not match" error caused by the secret key being encrypted twice on its first save (WordPress runs a setting's sanitize callback twice when the option is first created). Re-enter your SES secret key (and SMTP password) after updating.
• SES requests now sign only the required host and date headers, avoiding signature mismatches when the HTTP transport rewrites the Content-Type header.
• Fixed failed SES sends being written to the send log twice; every send is now recorded exactly once.

0.1.0

• Initial release. SMTP and Amazon SES (API) transports for wp_mail(), From name/email with optional forcing, a test-email button, optional send logging, and AES-256 at-rest encryption of stored credentials.