Set the “From Email” override in your mailer plugin and turn on the “Force From Email” toggle. Every mainstream mailer plugin (WP Mail SMTP, FluentSMTP, Post SMTP) exposes both controls in its settings, and this path covers effectively every WordPress site. Sites without a mailer plugin (they should have one for deliverability anyway) can use a mu-plugin filter or a dedicated From-override plugin.
By default WordPress sends from wordpress@<yoursite>.com with WordPress as the display name. That is rarely what you want. The From address is what recipients see in their inbox and what mailbox providers check against your DKIM signature; getting it right matters both for how your mail looks and for whether it authenticates.
The one-minute answer: your mailer plugin’s From Email setting
Every mailer plugin’s settings screen has a section labelled something like “From Email”, “Sender Email”, or “General Settings”, with two related fields:
- From Email: the email address that appears in the From header. Set this to an address on your own domain (
[email protected],[email protected], or similar). - Force From Email: a toggle that instructs the plugin to override any per-message From set by another plugin. Turn this on.
The Force toggle matters because WooCommerce, contact form plugins, and other integrations routinely set their own From headers. Without Force, your mailer plugin’s setting only applies as a default; plugins that explicitly set From can bypass it. With Force on, the mailer plugin overrides everything.
There is a matching pair for the display name: From Name and Force From Name. Set the From Name to your site’s name (Yourdomain or Yourdomain Support) and force it for consistency.
That is the whole procedure. Saves the settings, sends a test email, done.
Why setting this correctly matters for deliverability
The From address is not just cosmetic. Mailbox providers check that the domain in the From header aligns with the domain your DKIM signature was signed under. This is called DKIM alignment, and it is a hard requirement of Gmail’s February 2024 sender rules.
If your mailer plugin is sending through Postmark and Postmark is signing messages as yourdomain.com, but the From header says [email protected], DKIM signature verification succeeds but alignment fails. Gmail treats the message as unauthenticated. You lose deliverability without any error surfacing at the WordPress side.
The corollary: your From address has to be on a domain your provider has been configured to authenticate. If you own multiple domains, mail from each has to go through provider setup for that specific domain. Postmark, SMTP2GO, Amazon SES, and every other provider require domain verification (usually a set of DNS records) before they will sign mail as a given domain.
See How can WordPress send emails under my own domain name? for the sending-side setup and DNS for WordPress email for the DNS records.
The alternative paths
If you cannot or would rather not use a mailer plugin’s From override:
A mu-plugin filter. Two filters in wp-includes/pluggable.php control the default From:
add_filter( 'wp_mail_from', function( $email ) {
return '[email protected]';
} );
add_filter( 'wp_mail_from_name', function( $name ) {
return 'Your Site Name';
} );Drop that into a file at wp-content/mu-plugins/from-address.php and both filters apply globally. This is the code-level equivalent of the mailer plugin’s From Email setting, minus the Force option: other plugins can still override on a per-message basis.
A dedicated From-override plugin. 
WP Change Email Sender does exactly this: it filters wp_mail_from and wp_mail_from_name, adds a settings UI, done. Useful when a UI toggle is needed and no mailer plugin is available.
Directly in WooCommerce for order emails. WooCommerce > Settings > Emails has a “From Address” and “From Name” pair specifically for WooCommerce transactional emails. Setting them here can conflict with the mailer plugin’s Force From setting; pick one path.
For the mechanism-level detail (which filter runs first, DKIM alignment, and the mu-plugin path in full), see How to change the WordPress email sender. That guide is the deep dive; this qa item is the operator-facing quick answer.
Common gotchas
Two things that trip people up:
- Setting From to the submitter’s email. Common on contact form plugins: the notification’s From is set to whatever email the visitor typed into the form. Result: DKIM misalignment, spam-folder or rejected. Set From to a fixed address on your domain and set Reply-To to the submitter’s address instead. See Set contact form sender email as reply-to address.
- Setting From to an address on a domain you do not own or have not verified with the provider. The provider will refuse to sign the message, or the sign will not align. Use an address on the same domain the provider is configured for.
The admin email under Settings > General is unrelated to the sender. That is the address where WordPress delivers its own system notifications; it does not affect the From header on outgoing mail.