Out of the box, SiteStakes sends a few system emails. But your drip sequences and bulk emails will not send at all until you connect a provider. A provider also makes your lead notifications, ebook deliveries, and form confirmations send reliably from your own address. This is the switch that turns on email for your real estate website. It is worth doing early, before you build any follow-up sequences.
How to Set Up Your Email Provider
How to Set Up Your Email Provider
Your SiteStakes real estate website can send a few basic emails on its own. An email provider is required for drip and bulk emails.
The emails that drive follow-up need an email provider. Lead alerts, ebook deliveries, drip sequences, and bulk emails all run through a connected email provider. This guide shows which providers SiteStakes supports and how to connect one.
Why do you need to connect an email provider?
Which email providers can you use?
SiteStakes sends through five email providers: Brevo, SendGrid, Mailgun, Postmark, and plain SMTP.
Brevo is the recommended starting point. The first four are transactional email providers with their own sending APIs, while SMTP works with almost any mailbox or mail server. Any one of them will send your lead emails, drips, and bulk campaigns.
You will also see contact tools like Mailchimp here. Those sync your leads into a marketing audience, but they cannot send your SiteStakes emails, so pick one of the five above to send.
Where do you connect it?
In your back office, open Integrations and find the Email section, which is open by default. Each provider is its own card. Click the one you use to expand it, and you will see the fields it needs.
What do you enter for each provider?
Most providers need just a few details for your email sending configuration.
- Postmark, SendGrid, and Mailgun setup all start the same way: paste the API key, which Postmark calls a Server API Token, then set your From email and From name.
- Mailgun also needs your sending domain, like mg.yourdomain.com, and your region, US or EU.
- To connect SMTP, enter your SMTP credentials: the mail server host and port (587 for TLS or 465 for SSL), your username and password, and the encryption type, plus your From email and name.
The From email is the address recipients see, and the From name is usually your company name.
How do you confirm it is connected?
After you paste your key and save, click Test on the provider card. This is the quickest delivery testing step: SiteStakes checks your credentials against the provider and tells you whether it connected. Connected successfully means you are set. An error usually means the API key, or for Mailgun the sending domain, is wrong or mistyped. Fix it and test again.
Will your emails reach the inbox?
Connecting a provider lets you send. Whether your mail lands in the inbox depends on proving it really comes from you. That proof is set up in your provider.
Before a provider will send for you, it asks you to verify your sender. The quick way is to verify a single From address. The stronger way is to authenticate your whole sending domain for better delivery. Your provider gives you the DNS records to add — usually SPF and DKIM. You paste them into your domain's DNS host, like your registrar or Cloudflare, and the provider confirms them. Adding a DMARC record is an optional next step. It tells inbox providers how to treat mail that fails those checks, and it guards your domain against spoofing.
Mailgun is the one to set up first, since SiteStakes asks for your Mailgun sending domain. Verify a sending domain in Mailgun, then enter that exact domain on its card. SendGrid, Postmark, and Brevo send as soon as you verify a sender with them. Either way, the From email you enter must be one your provider has verified. That, plus a steady sending reputation, keeps your emails out of spam.
What works once your provider is connected?
Once your provider is connected and tested, your real estate website can send everything that matters. That means lead notifications, ebook deliveries, form confirmations, drip sequences, and bulk emails, all from your address. If you have already built a drip sequence, your email provider is the piece that lets it start sending. For the full picture, see what SiteStakes email can do.
Common questions
Which provider should I choose?+
If you do not already use one, Brevo is the recommended starting point. It is quick to set up and free to begin with. If you already have SendGrid, Mailgun, or Postmark, use that. SMTP works with almost any mailbox but gives you the least delivery tracking.
Can SiteStakes track bounces and opens?+
Yes, with the API providers: Brevo, SendGrid, Mailgun, and Postmark. Each card includes steps to add a webhook in your provider so SiteStakes records deliveries, bounces, opens, and clicks, and automatically stops emailing addresses that hard-bounce. Plain SMTP cannot report this back, so if bounce tracking matters, choose one of the API providers.
Can I send from my Gmail or Outlook?+
You can connect them through SMTP, but personal mailboxes have low daily sending limits and weaker deliverability for the bulk and drip email an investor website sends. Once you are emailing many leads, a dedicated provider is the better choice.
I connected Mailchimp but my emails still will not send. Why?+
Mailchimp syncs your contacts; it does not send your SiteStakes emails. Connect one of the five sending providers — Brevo, SendGrid, Mailgun, Postmark, or SMTP — to send.
My drip sequence is not sending. What is wrong?+
The most common reason is no email provider connected, since drips have no fallback. Connect one here first. If a provider is connected and drips still do not send, see email drips not sending.