Promote can send invitations, reminders, and notifications through your own mail server. This article explains the available email setup options and how to configure SMTP settings for your Promote site.
What’s in this article
Using your own mail server
Promote can send all email — including invitations, reminders, and notifications — through your own mail server, as long as it supports outgoing SMTP. This gives you full control over how emails appear to your learners.
Benefits of using your own mail server:
- Choose your own sender address and sender name
- Reply-to works — learners can respond directly to your emails
- Use a separate email address per Promote site for multi-brand setups
- Full access to delivery logs and bounce information
Recommended: use a dedicated transactional email service
While it is possible to connect Promote to a regular mailbox (such as Microsoft 365), we recommend using a dedicated transactional email service. These are purpose-built for application-generated email and offer better deliverability, detailed delivery logs, and simpler long-term maintenance — without the limitations that come with using a regular mailbox.
Popular options include:
These services give you SMTP credentials that connect to Promote exactly like any other mail server, and most offer a free tier suitable for lower sending volumes.
What information is required
To connect Promote to your mail server, you will need:
- Hostname — the SMTP server address
- Username — usually your full email address or an API token
- Password — your account password or API token
- Port — typically 587 with STARTTLS
- Email address — the address emails will be sent from
- Sender name (optional) — if provided, this is shown as the sender name instead of the email address. By default, "Promote" is shown as the sender name.
Important requirements:
- The mail account must be a real mailbox — email aliases are not supported.
- Set the account password to never expire to prevent the integration from stopping unexpectedly.
- Always use SSL/TLS. Invitations and other communications sent through Promote should always be encrypted in transit.
- When using your own mail server, Promote International no longer has access to delivery logs and cannot track bounces or delivery failures — that information is stored in your own mail server or service.
Using Microsoft 365 (Office 365)
Microsoft 365 is commonly used with Promote, but there are a few important things you need to know before setting it up.
Promote authenticates to your mail server using a username and password (basic authentication). Microsoft 365 requires SMTP authentication to be explicitly enabled for each mailbox — it is not on by default. Additionally, Microsoft is phasing out basic authentication for SMTP entirely: existing tenants will have it disabled by default at the end of December 2026, and new tenants created after that point will not have the option at all. For this reason, Microsoft 365 is not a recommended long-term choice for your Promote email integration, and we encourage you to plan a move to a dedicated transactional email service.
If you still want to use Microsoft 365, follow the steps below.
- Enable SMTP AUTH for the mailbox
A Microsoft 365 administrator needs to enable SMTP authentication for the specific mailbox you want to use with Promote:
- Sign in to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center
- Go to Users → Active users and select the mailbox
- In the panel that opens, select the Mail tab
- Click Manage email apps
- Check the box for Authenticated SMTP
- Click Save changes
Full instructions: Enable or disable SMTP AUTH in Exchange Online — Microsoft Learn
- Check Security Defaults
Even after enabling SMTP AUTH on the mailbox, authentication may still fail. As Microsoft notes in their documentation, if Security Defaults are enabled in your Microsoft Entra organization, SMTP AUTH is already disabled in Exchange Online — and enabling it per mailbox will not override this. Check with your IT administrator whether Security Defaults need to be adjusted.
Microsoft 365 SMTP settings for Promote:
| Setting | Value |
| Hostname | smtp.office365.com |
| Port | 587 |
| Encryption | STARTTLS (TLS) |
| Username | Your full Microsoft 365 email address |
| Password | Your Microsoft 365 account password |
For full Microsoft documentation on sending email via SMTP from applications, see: How to set up a multifunction device or application to send email using Microsoft 365 — Microsoft Learn
💡Tip! Follow our Office 365 Email Setup Checklist for Promote in this article >
Standard email setup - Postmark
In the standard setup of Promote email is sent via the service Postmark by ActiveCampaign, LLC (https://postmarkapp.com/) using the address noreply@promotelogin.com.
Outbound SMTP Servers (where we send email from):
- 50.31.156.96/27 (50.31.156.96 - 127)
- 104.245.209.192/26 (104.245.209.192 - 255)
- 50.31.205.0/24 (50.31.205.1 - 255)
To ensure email delivery please make sure to whitelist the 3 IP rangers above and the email address noreply@promotelogin.com
Postmark Data Protection policy can be found here >