Update 4/8/2017: SendGrid no longer has a free tier for sending email. Try SendGrid for free and send up to 40,000 emails for 30 days. Paid options start at $14.95 USD per month for up to 50,000 emails. Though this is no longer a free service, we believe it is still a good option to send email through Front Desk, particularly if you're experiencing difficulty sending email in bulk with your current email provider due to rate limiting.
Some of our users have issues when sending large numbers of emails through Front Desk due to being email rate limited by their internet service providers (ISP). Essentially, if you send too many emails in a short period of time, your ISP can interpret this as someone sending spam or over using the ISP’s resources and block or slow your connection.
Generally, we recommend using our MailChimp integration for marketing type emails, however if you want to send emails directly through Front Desk and are experiencing issues with your email provider, you could use an alternative email service such as SendGrid. Fortunately, for many of our users this service is currently free if you send less than 12,000 emails per month.
The first step is to sign up for an account at: https://www.sendgrid.com
Once you have created your account and logged in to SendGrid, click on Settings in the panel on the left and select API Keys.
Click Create API Key from the top right.
Give the key a Name then scroll down to select Full Access, followed by Create & View.
The API key will be created. The next step is to copy it to your clipboard and to open Front Desk.
Select the System Information icon above the appointment book
Scroll across to the Email tab. Select SMTP (Direct Email) and enter in your email details. For the first box Server enter smtp.sendgrid.net. Then select the More button
Tick the Outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication box. Enter the User Name: apikey and paste your generated API Key as the password. You can use SMTP Port 25, but we recommend using 587 as some ISP block external email traffic on port 25. Select OK and close the System Information window.
Front Desk is now configured to send out emails through SendGrid’s servers. For example, if you wish to send an email to all patients, go to Reports > Patient List and select Email.
