Send email from Tilda over SMTP

Tilda can send through an external SMTP server in three places: customer order notifications, Members Area emails, and one-off emails to leads from Tilda CRM. Form submissions are not on that list — Tilda sends those itself, and there is no way to plug in your own server.

This guide sets up each of the three and shows the workaround for forms when submissions have to come from your own domain.

SMTP connection settings

Order notifications

Go to Site Settings → Payment Systems → General payment settings, find the customer order notification settings and choose to send through your own mail server rather than SendGrid:

The customer gets the email after a successful payment, or when the order uses the Cash payment option. Save, then use the test email link under the save button — the test goes to the address your Tilda account is registered with.

Members Area emails

The Members Area emails users when they sign up or are added by hand, are added to a group, reset or change their password, or change their email address — and, if one-time code login is on, sends the code at every sign-in. Those are emails where a delay locks someone out.

Open Members Area Settings → Advanced → Mail server settings and set the email delivery service to your mail server. The fields are the same as for orders: host smtp.postwing.app, port 465, SSL, the token's login and password, and a sender address on your verified domain.

Tilda CRM, used to email a lead directly from their card, has its own email-sending settings on the CRM board; choose SMTP there and enter the same values.

Forms: why SMTP is not an option, and what to do

Form submissions reach your inbox through the Email data receiver under Site Settings → Forms. Tilda sends those messages from its own servers: there is no SMTP field and no way to make them come from your domain. For notifying the site owner that is usually fine.

If a submission should come from your domain, land in a shared inbox with a proper Reply-To, or trigger a reply to the visitor, connect a webhook to the form (Site Settings → Forms → Webhook) and send the email from your own script. How Tilda calls it:

• the form is POSTed like a regular HTML form, with the service fields tranid (the lead ID) and formid added;
• connecting the webhook sends a test=test request first;
• the script must answer 200 within five seconds, or Tilda retries twice, a minute apart;
• you can attach an API key — you pick its name and value, and whether it travels in the POST data or a header.

The script below sends the submission through the REST API: one HTTP request, no library, comfortably inside five seconds. Name, Email and Phone are the form fields' variable names — adjust them if you renamed yours. Name the webhook's API key secret and send it in the POST data.

<?php
// tilda-webhook.php — receives a Tilda form submission and sends it via the API
const TOKEN_LOGIN = 'token-login@your-domain.com';
const TOKEN_PASS  = 'your-token-password';
const WEBHOOK_KEY = 'a-long-random-string'; // the API key set on the webhook

$data = $_POST;

// Tilda's verification request when the webhook is connected
if (($data['test'] ?? '') === 'test') {
    exit('ok');
}

if (($data['secret'] ?? '') !== WEBHOOK_KEY) {
    http_response_code(403);
    exit;
}

$name  = trim($data['Name'] ?? '');
$phone = trim($data['Phone'] ?? '');
$email = filter_var($data['Email'] ?? '', FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL);

$body = '<p><b>Name:</b> ' . htmlspecialchars($name) . '</p>'
      . '<p><b>Phone:</b> ' . htmlspecialchars($phone) . '</p>'
      . '<p><b>Email:</b> ' . htmlspecialchars((string) $email) . '</p>';

$payload = [
    'to'      => ['sales@your-domain.com'],
    'subject' => 'New enquiry from the website',
    'body'    => $body,
    'sender'  => 'Website <noreply@your-domain.com>',
    'auth'    => ['username' => TOKEN_LOGIN, 'password' => TOKEN_PASS],
];
if ($email) {
    $payload['reply_to'] = $email; // "Reply" goes to the visitor
}
if (!empty($data['tranid'])) {
    $payload['idempotency_key'] = 'tilda-' . $data['tranid']; // a retry is not a duplicate
}

$ch = curl_init('https://api.postwing.app/external/send_email_simple/');
curl_setopt_array($ch, [
    CURLOPT_POST           => true,
    CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER     => ['Content-Type: application/json'],
    CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS     => json_encode($payload),
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
    CURLOPT_TIMEOUT        => 4, // Tilda waits five seconds at most
]);
curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

echo 'ok';

Send a test email

For orders and the Members Area, send the test email from the settings. For forms, submit one on the published page. Every message shows up in your Postwing sending log with its delivery status.

Troubleshooting