Send announcements from your own address

By default your hosted site's email comes from an address of ours, under your choir's name. If your choir has email of its own, with Google Workspace, Gmail or Purelymail for example, you can have announcements sent through that account instead, so that members see them coming from choir@yourchoir.org. This page is for a Site Admin or Admin of a hosted site on the Starter or Premium plan. Starter and Premium plans

It is optional. Announcements are delivered perfectly well without it: see How your site sends email.

On a self-hosted site

A self-hosted site has no Email page in its menu. If you open the page by its address it says "How this site sends email is set on the server (EMAIL_PROVIDER and EMAIL_FROM)." To send announcements through a separate service there, see Send announcements through a different service.

What goes through your server, and what never does

Goes through your mail server, from your address	Always goes through us, from our address
Announcements emailed to your members	Login links, for admins and members
Messages to your donors and to a concert's ticket holders (Premium)	Contact form messages forwarded to your choir
	The email a buyer's tickets arrive in
	Notices to your choir

The second column never changes, whatever you set here. As the page says, "a problem with your mail server can never stop anyone logging in."

Open the Email page

In the admin panel, choose Email from the menu. Only a Site Admin or an Admin sees it; a Manager does not. See The three kinds of admin.

The page opens with: "Your site's email is sent for you, under your choir's name, from an address of ours. If your choir has its own email (with Google Workspace or Purelymail, say), you can have announcements to your members sent through it instead, so they come from your own address. Login links and contact-form messages always stay with us, so they are sure to arrive."

Before you fill in the form

You need a mail account that lets a program send through it. That is called SMTP, and nearly every mail service offers it. You will need four things from the account:

• the name of its outgoing mail server;
• the port it listens on;
• a username, which is usually the full email address;
• a password, which for Google must be a special "app password", not the usual one.

Google Workspace or Gmail

Google does not accept the account's usual password here. Do this first, signed in to Google as the account you will send from:

1. Turn on 2-Step Verification for the account, if it is not on already.
2. Create an app password: in your Google Account, go to Security, then App passwords. Google shows a 16-character password once. Copy it.
3. If you want to send from a different address than the account's own (from choir@yourchoir.org using the account secretary@yourchoir.org, say), first add that address to the account as a Send mail as alias, in Gmail's settings.

Then on the Email page press Google Workspace or Gmail beside Fill in for: and use:

Field	Value
Server (SMTP host)	smtp.gmail.com (filled in for you)
Port	587 (STARTTLS) (filled in for you)
Send from	The account's address, or the alias you added
Username	The account's full email address
Password	The 16-character app password

Purelymail

Press Purelymail beside Fill in for: and use:

Field	Value
Server (SMTP host)	smtp.purelymail.com (filled in for you)
Port	465 (SSL/TLS) (filled in for you)
Send from	The mailbox's address
Username	The mailbox's full email address
Password	That mailbox's password, or an app password if you have set one up for it

Another provider

Look in your provider's help for its "SMTP" or "outgoing mail" settings. It needs to accept a username and password on port 465 or 587. Type the server's name and choose the port yourself.

The form: "Your mail server"

Field	What it is	Rules
Fill in for:	Two buttons, Google Workspace or Gmail and Purelymail, that fill in the server and port for you.	They do not change the other fields.
Server (SMTP host)	The name of your provider's outgoing mail server, such as smtp.example.com.	Needed. It must be a name, with a dot in it. A numeric IP address is refused.
Port	Which door on that server to use.	One of 465 (SSL/TLS), 587 (STARTTLS) or 2525 (STARTTLS). It starts on 587. All three are encrypted.
Send from	The address your announcements will come from. Your choir's name is added as the sender's name.	Needed. Usually the mail account's own address. Up to 200 characters.
Username	What the mail account signs in with.	Needed. Usually the full email address. Up to 200 characters.
Password	The account's password, or its app password.	Needed the first time. Up to 500 characters.

About the password, the page says: "The password is stored encrypted and is never shown again, here or anywhere." Once saved, the box is empty and reads "Saved. Leave empty to keep it". You can change the port or the Send from address without typing it again. If you change the Server or the Username, you must enter the password again.

Save and test

1. Fill in the form and press Save. The page shows "Mail server saved".
2. Two more buttons appear. Press Send me a test email.
3. The page shows "A test email is on its way to" followed by your address. The test goes to the address you logged in to the admin panel with.
4. Check that inbox. The message has the subject "Test email from" followed by your choir's name, and comes from your Send from address.

If the test fails, the page shows the reason your server gave. Each message is explained in Mail server errors and spam. You can send one test every 30 seconds.

Saving does not check the settings by itself. Always send a test after saving or changing them.

Once saved, the banner at the top changes to: "Announcements to your members are sent through smtp.gmail.com, from choir@yourchoir.org. Login links and contact-form messages are still sent for you through the platform, so a problem with your mail server can never stop anyone logging in." (with your own server and address).

What changes for your members

• Announcements come from your choir's name and your own address.
• A reply goes to the Public email address in Site Settings, Contact, as before, or to your Send from address if the two are the same.
• A new sending address is sometimes treated as spam at first. See If messages land in spam.
• An announcement to a large choir takes a little longer. A mail account is not a bulk service, so messages are handed to your server a couple at a time: 60 members take about half a minute. You still see "Queued" and "Sending" as usual, and can leave the page.

If your server refuses an announcement

If your mail server will not accept a message when an announcement is going out, because the password was changed for instance, that message is sent through us instead, from our address, so your members still receive it. You are not shown an error for this. If members tell you an announcement arrived from the usual Choir Master CMS address instead of your own, come back to this page and press Send me a test email to find out what your server now says.

Stop using your own server

1. Press Stop using it.
2. A box asks "Stop using your own mail server?" and says "Announcements will be sent through the platform again." Press Stop using it to confirm.

The page shows "Announcements are sent through the platform again". Your settings, including the saved password, are removed.

If your plan changes

If your site goes back to the Free plan, your announcements stop (the Free plan does not include email to members) and the settings here are kept, unused. Return to Starter or Premium and they are in use again without your doing anything.

On a Free site the Email page shows no form. It says: "Your site's email is sent for you, under your choir's name. Sending announcements through your own mail server, from your own address, is part of a paid plan." followed by a See plans link to your account. See Move to a paid plan.

If something goes wrong

Messages when you press Save:

Message	What to do
"Enter the mail server's name, such as smtp.example.com"	Server (SMTP host) is empty, has a space in it, or is an IP address. Enter the server's name.
"The port is one of 465, 587, 2525"	Choose one of the three from the list.
"Enter the email address to send from"	Send from is not an email address.
"Enter the password for this mail account"	The password is needed: this is the first save, or you changed the server or the username.
"The username is too long" or "The password is too long"	Check for something pasted by mistake.
"Could not load the mail server settings"	Reload the page. If it persists, get help.

Messages when you press Send me a test email are in Mail server errors and spam.

If there is no Email item in your menu at all, you are logged in as a Manager, or your site is not a hosted one.