EmbedMyReviews has a direct (native) integration with SendGrid. It is very easy to get started with SendGrid and this guide we will go over all the steps required to start sending emails via this service.
What plan should I get?
SendGrid's free plan allows you to send 3,000 emails per month and is a great starting point. You can upgrade to their Essentials plan later which includes 50,000 emails per month for $19.95 / per month.
Our recommendation is to start with the free plan and upgrade once you need additional capacity. You will not need to do any additional steps as long as you use the same SendGrid account when upgrading.
Prerequisites
Before getting started with the setup make sure you have a domain that you will be using to send emails from. By default if your customers don't provide their own email domain the emails will be sent from your agencies domain. You will also need to have access to your DNS provider.
Domain setup
Once you have signed up with SendGrid follow the below steps to authenticate your email domain and then link your SendGrid account to your EmbedMyReviews account.
- Login to your SendGrid account
- Click on settings in the left sidebar
- Click on sender authentication
- Click on authenticate your domain
- In step 1 select your DNS provider
- In step 2 you can leave the brand links off and use SendGrid for now
- Click next
- Set the from domain to your chosen domain
- Copy all the DNS settings to your DNS provider
- Check the "I've added these records." checkbox
- Click verify
- If everything was setup correctly the verification should pass and your new domain has been configured correctly
Create SendGrid API key
Once you have setup your domain with SendGrid you can now follow the below steps to create an API key that we will use to communicate with your SendGrid account.
- Click on settings in the left sidebar
- Click on API keys
- Click on the "Create API key" button
- Give your API key a name for this example we will call it "EmbedMyReviews"
- Under API key permissions set this to full access
- Click "Create & View"
- Copy the API key to your clipboard
Connect SendGrid to EmbedMyReviews
Once you have setup your domain and API key with SendGrid you can now follow the below steps to connect your SendGrid account to your EmbedMyReviews account.
- Login to your EmbedMyReviews account
- Go to agency settings
- Click on email in the left sidebar
- Click add provider button
- Give your email provider a name for this example we will call it "SendGrid"
- Under the provider dropdown select "SendGrid"
- Click add
- In the API key field paste in the API key that you copied from the "Create SendGrid API key" steps
- Click verify
- Under throttling you can leave the default settings and click save
- Under feedback you can enable open and click tracking
- Click the "Configure SendGrid" button
- Now enter your desired default from/reply email address and names
- Click save
- At the bottom of this page click on the "Sent Test Email" button
- Make sure the from email address is correctly configured and send an email to any email address you have access to
- If you receieve the email you have correctly configured SendGrid with your account