Using this feature is no longer recommended. It was our first attempt to solve the email reliability problem. It wasn’t easy or powerful enough, and SendGrid raised their prices.
That’s why we created Caldera Forms Pro, an integrated solution for solving the email deliverability problem for WordPress contact forms. Besides making it easy to get fancy email layouts, form to PDF, email stats and more, Caldera Forms Pro is easier-to-use solution than the old SendGrid integration and provides way more value, even if you don’t get the cost-saving bundle of add-ons by choosing the yearly price option.
Using SendGrid With Caldera Forms (Not Recommended Anymore)
Caldera Forms can be set to use SendGrid‘s API for sending emails, instead of relying on your WordPress server to send emails. Doing so can increase the reliability of your emails, reduce the load of of your servers and provides analytics about email delivery and open rate.
To activate this feature, you will need Caldera Forms 1.4.0 or later, and a SendGrid API key. If you do not already have a SendGrid account, you can sign up here. Your site must also be running PHP 5.4 or later to use Caldera Forms advanced email modes.
If you are using the SendGrid Plugin, you should set email mode to WordPress, since that plugin takes over WordPress’ email system.
Getting Your SendGrid API Key
Once you have logged into your SendGrid account, click on the “Settings” item in the sidebar menu. This will reveal more choices. Click on “API Keys.”
Note that if you already have created API keys, the short version of the key shown on the API Keys page is not the right key. You will need to create a new key to get the full key. Click the blue “Create API Key” and select the “General API Key” option.
In the options settings that pop out, check “Full Access” for all settings in the “Mail Send” section and in “Mail Settings” section. Then give your key a name and click save.
This will take you to a page with the full API key. This is the only time SendGrid will ever show you the full API key. Make sure to save this key.
Enabling SendGrid In Caldera Forms
Now that you have your SendGrid API key, you need to tell Caldera Forms to use SendGrid. Go to the main Caldera Forms admin page on your site and click the “Email Settings” button. Then change the “Email Settings” system to “SendGrid” and enter your API key in the “SendGrid API Key” field below it and click save.
That’s it all of your forms, should now send emails through SendGrid. You should test by submitting a form with the mailer enabled and see if the email shows up in your SendGrid dashboard.
Important Notes
- If the SendGrid API returns an error, Caldera Forms will then attempt to send via the WordPress default email.
- This system bypasses wp_mail() and does not replace it. Other WordPress emails will still go through wp_mail().