SiteGround is one of the few WordPress hosts that includes full domain email (unlimited mailboxes, webmail, IMAP and POP3, forwarding) alongside the WordPress install, and it sends WordPress’s own mail through its local stack out of the box. Outbound SMTP ports are open if an operator wants to swap in an external relay. The cap most operators meet first is the hourly throughput: 400 messages per hour on the standard plans, 800 on GoGeek and Cloud, with every recipient on a message counting as a separate send. The deliverability the bundled stack actually achieves depends on the reputation of the shared IP that thousands of other SiteGround sites also send from, which is the trade-off the body quantifies.
Plans renew at $17.99/month (StartUp), $29.99/month (GrowBig), and $44.99/month (GoGeek), billed annually. SiteGround sits in the upper end of shared-hosting pricing rather than the managed-WordPress tier inhabited by Kinsta and WP Engine.
Email on SiteGround
How wp_mail works by default
A fresh WordPress install on SiteGround sends mail through the same server that runs the site. There is no SMTP plugin to install, no relay account to set up, no third-party service to point WordPress at. Password resets, comment notifications, WooCommerce order confirmations: all of it leaves the server through SiteGround’s own mail stack. Recipients see whatever From address you set in WordPress; SiteGround does not rewrite it to anything that exposes the host’s name to the recipient.
The detail worth knowing is that SiteGround also signs that mail for you. DKIM is a cryptographic signature receiving servers use to confirm a message really came from your domain. SiteGround 
turns DKIM on by default on every hosted domain and applies the signature automatically whenever mail leaves through its own servers from an address that belongs to a mailbox on the same domain. Most shared hosts skip this step, so the same WordPress install on a generic shared plan often goes out unsigned and lands in spam more often. On SiteGround it’s wired in, which is the single largest reason WordPress mail tends to land in inboxes here without extra setup.
Outbound SMTP port status
| Port | Status | Protocol |
|---|---|---|
| 25 | Open | SMTP (legacy) — not documented explicitly; not blocked in practice |
| 465 | Open | SMTPS (implicit TLS) — not documented explicitly; not blocked in practice |
| 587 | Open | SMTP with STARTTLS — the port SiteGround’s own SMTP tutorial documents for both its own server and external services |
| 2525 | Open | SMTP (alternate) — not documented explicitly; not blocked in practice |
| 993 | Open | IMAPS (incoming, bundled mailboxes) |
| 995 | Open | POP3S (incoming, bundled mailboxes) |
SiteGround does not publish a port table of its own. Port 587 is the one its WordPress SMTP tutorial documents. The other rows above are educated reads: the same tutorial walks readers through connecting WordPress to Gmail’s SMTP server (which can only be reached on 465 or 587), and SMTP plugins like WP Mail SMTP and FluentSMTP routinely connect from SiteGround sites to outside services like Postmark and SMTP2GO without trouble. Effectively, SiteGround behaves like a host that doesn’t block any of the standard mail ports; it just doesn’t write that down anywhere.
Sending limits
| Plan tier | Hourly limit | Recipients per message |
|---|---|---|
| StartUp, GrowBig, Ecommerce, Coderick | 400 | 80 |
| GoGeek, Cloud | 800 | 80 |
The catch with the recipient count is that everyone you address counts as a separate send. A single email to 80 people uses up 80 of the hour’s allowance, not one. The limit is hourly only; SiteGround’s acceptable-use article does not set a daily cap on top. For reference, Kinsta sends no WordPress mail at all without a third-party SMTP service plugged in, and WP Engine sets its own undisclosed hourly limit on the relay it uses by default. Among WordPress hosts that do publish a default-path number, SiteGround’s 400 per hour on the entry plan is the most generous, and the 800 per hour on GoGeek and Cloud is well above what most transactional traffic needs.
For heavier business communications needs, we recommend using Google Workspace. For bulk mailing needs like email marketing we recommend our Email Marketing service.
The policy treats the hourly limit as a ceiling for transactional and light business mail. Above that line, SiteGround steers customers toward other services rather than negotiating exceptions.
Mailboxes, forwarding, DNS
You can create unlimited mailboxes at your domain on every plan: [email protected], [email protected], as many as you want. Each individual account can grow to 10 GB on its own, but every mailbox on the domain shares a single 10 GB storage pool, so in practice the cap on the whole domain’s mail is 10 GB total, not 10 GB per inbox. SiteGround’s Site Tools panel gives you a webmail interface to read mail in a browser, and exposes IMAP, POP3, and SMTP settings for mobile devices and desktop mail clients. Forwarding rules are part of the same panel; you don’t need to set up a separate forwarding service.
Mail clients on phones and laptops can connect on the standard IMAP and POP3 ports without anything extra to configure. The email feature set doesn’t change with the price tier: the $17.99/month StartUp plan gets the same mailboxes, the same storage pool, the same forwarding as the $44.99/month GoGeek plan.
SiteGround also runs your domain’s DNS by default, which is what lets the platform publish SPF and DKIM records for you automatically. If you’ve moved DNS elsewhere (Cloudflare is the common one), that automatic publishing stops working. The SPF and DKIM records have to be copied across to the new DNS host by hand, and the auto-DKIM advantage disappears for any mail that goes out under a domain SiteGround doesn’t control.
Authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC)
SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are the three small DNS records that tell receiving servers your mail is genuinely yours and not someone forging your name. SiteGround sets up the first two for you on any domain whose DNS it manages. The SPF record (which lists the servers allowed to send mail under your domain) and the DKIM record (which lets receivers verify the signature mentioned earlier) are both on by default in Site Tools → Email → Authentication, and the DKIM record can be regenerated if you ever need to roll the key. DMARC, the third record, isn’t published automatically. SiteGround treats your DMARC policy as a decision you should make yourself, and its documentation walks through adding the record by hand if you want one.
The detail to watch out for is what happens when you add a third-party mailer later. The SPF record SiteGround publishes lists SiteGround’s own mail servers and nothing else. If you install an SMTP plugin and route WordPress through Postmark, SMTP2GO, Mailgun, or any other service, you need to add that service to your SPF record as well, or replace the SiteGround entry with the new one if you’re moving sending off SiteGround entirely. Skipping this step is the most common reason mail starts failing authentication after a relay migration: the new service signs the mail correctly with its own DKIM, but SPF still resolves to a record that doesn’t list it.
What SiteGround does not provide
- A dedicated sending IP address. Your WordPress mail goes out from the same IP address as the other sites on your shared server. If one of those sites sends spam and the IP gets a bad reputation, your mail’s deliverability suffers too. Sites that need to insulate themselves from the neighbours need a sending service with a dedicated IP: Postmark on the Dedicated IP add-on, Mailgun on its Foundation plan, SendGrid on Pro.
- Bounce tracking, suppression lists, and delivery events. SiteGround’s mail goes out and that’s it. There’s no log of which messages bounced, nothing to stop you sending to an address that has bounced ten times in a row, and no way to know when a recipient opened or clicked a message. If you need any of that, a third-party service is the way to get it. Mailgun and Postmark both publish those events to your application as they happen.
- Marketing or newsletter sending. SiteGround’s policy explicitly directs marketing mail to their separate Email Marketing service. The 400-an-hour limit is the mechanical ceiling; the policy is the editorial one.
- Control over the return-path address. WordPress mail sent through SiteGround uses an envelope address set by SiteGround, not one you can change. Sites with strict DMARC policies that need this address aligned to the domain need a sending service that exposes that setting.
- Detailed sending logs you can search. No per-message log, no transaction log that you can pull up to see why a particular message failed. The relay services provide the visibility SiteGround’s bundled mail does not.
When a third-party relay is needed
SiteGround’s bundled mail is enough for most WordPress sites. If the site sends only routine transactional traffic (password resets, comment notifications, WooCommerce order confirmations) and the volume stays under 400 messages an hour, the built-in stack does the job. Personal sites, small WooCommerce stores, and membership sites with up to a few thousand active users sit comfortably here and don’t need to add anything.
A third-party relay starts to make sense when one of these conditions kicks in:
- You’re hitting the volume cap. A site approaching 400 messages an hour, or one that wants to send a single message to dozens of recipients without burning the whole hourly quota, needs to move sending off SiteGround. Postmark is the cleanest fit for transactional sites under 100,000 messages a month; SMTP2GO is the cheapest option that’s still credible; Mailgun is where higher volumes make economic sense.
- A single missed email costs you money. If your site is a bank, a paid SaaS product, or anything where a customer who can’t reset their password churns instead of contacting support, your mail can’t depend on a shared SiteGround IP. A dedicated sending service gives you both a dedicated IP and a stream of bounce events so you know the moment a message fails to land.
- You need to see what’s happening. If you want a dashboard showing how many emails were sent, how many landed, how many bounced, how many were opened, SiteGround’s mail doesn’t produce that data. A third-party service does.
- You’re sending newsletters or campaigns. SiteGround’s own policy treats marketing mail as someone else’s job. Mailchimp Transactional is one option; a dedicated marketing platform is the more common one.
A practical note: because SiteGround doesn’t restrict outbound mail ports, both SMTP-based plugins (WP Mail SMTP, FluentSMTP, Post SMTP) and API-based integrations work without trouble. SMTP is simpler to set up; API integrations hold up better when something on the network or DNS side changes.
Going the other way, sites following the WordPress without the plugin minimum-stack pattern can stay on SiteGround’s default sending without installing an SMTP plugin at all; the bundled relay is what makes the no-plugin SMTP slice viable here.
Verdict
SiteGround is the right pick for site owners who want WordPress hosting and basic domain email from a single provider and who are willing to accept that the deliverability ceiling is set by sharing an IP address with other SiteGround customers. The 400-an-hour limit on the entry plan and 800 on GoGeek are the most generous of any host that publishes a number, so the bundled mail is genuinely useful for small WooCommerce stores and membership sites, not a polite token. Sites that need to insulate their deliverability from the neighbours, or whose mail volume crosses the hourly limit, are better off layering a service like Postmark or SMTP2GO on top. Because SiteGround leaves the outbound mail ports open, that’s a job for a plugin and a set of credentials, not a developer.
For the WordPress email setup that supplements SiteGround’s default path, see how to configure WordPress email.
Corrections
- 2026-06-15: an earlier version stated 10 GB of mailbox storage per account and listed daily sending caps; SiteGround documents a single 10 GB pool shared across all mailboxes on the domain and publishes hourly limits only.