FULL FABRIC also provides the option for your institution to send emails from FULL FABRIC via your institution's SMTP instead of FULL FABRIC's email provider.
FULL FABRIC does not recommend the use of your institution's SMTP, instead of FULL FABRIC's preferred email provider - Amazon Web Services (AWS) - for several reasons explained below.
Using an established global platform like AWS as your email provider ensures optimal delivery of your emails and provides additional functionalities beyond those which are typically available through your institution's SMTP. Your institution's SMTP is not designed to be performant for the sending of large amounts of emails like campaigns and a host of issues such as failure of dispatching emails or slow delivery of emails occur due to this.
Limitations of using your institution's SMTP as a system-wide SMTP account
Please note the following limitations when using your institution's SMTP that you must account for:
Maximum email rate limits that your own SMTP has for the maximum number of emails that can be dispatched with a certain timeframe. This rate limit will limit the time it takes to dispatch your emails, and when you reach the limit, for example if you send a large campaign then the delivery of your emails will be delayed.
Email statistics regarding delivery of your emails are not available when using your own SMTP. This is because your own SMTP unlike other email platforms does not have a service which allows for the retrieval of this information. Tracking of opens/clicks however is done by Full Fabric regardless of SMTP so that will still work.
Any issues with delivery of your emails via your own SMTP must be resolved with your IT team responsible for managing your SMTP.
If you still decide to proceed with using your institution's SMTP please read how to set it up below.
Set up of your institution's SMTP
It is recommended that you set up FULL FABRIC to use an SMTP configured to dispatch emails from your own domain. This could be your existing SMTP server or another SMTP gateway or relay server.
Let's look at an example. Let's say your website can be found at school.ac.uk and that your email addresses take the form of user@school.ac.uk. Your FULL FABRIC instance might be set up at apply.school.ac.uk. In this case you would want all emails dispatched from FULL FABRIC to be dispatched from a school.ac.uk subdomain.
Setting up a system-wide SMTP account
A system-wide SMTP account is used to send all emails - 1-1 emails, automated emails, and mass campaign emails.
To set up a system-wide SMTP account please contact our client success team.
Setting up a user-specific SMTP account
User-specific SMTP accounts allow staff users to have their 1-1 emails dispatched from FULL FABRIC using their regular email account. This way all dispatched emails will not only be in FULL FABRIC, but also in the Sent or Outbox folder of their email accounts.
To set up your user-specific SMTP account visit your profile settings page - Settings > SMTP - and fill in the required details.
