You may want to offload your email to a separate SMTP server for any number of reasons. For instance, I don't have any email server installed on my local test servers. In order to test email, I have to use an external service. If you have a Gmail account then you can use it for this purpose. There are several ways to do this. If you are a Google App Developer, you can use their App Relay service. If you have a Google Apps for Business Account, you can use that. Finally, you can use a private Gmail account. It is the last option that we are going to cover today.

1. The best way to do this is to generate an App Password on your Gmail account. We'll do this first. Open the Google Account Security site and you should get a page that looks like this.



2. Click on Signing Into Google. One the next page, you will see the following box.



3. Click on the arrow to the right of App Passwords. This will show any existing App Passwords and allow you to create more. App Passwords are unique passwords that allow you to bypass Two-Step Authorization on your account. You want to make sure to keep these private.



4. At the bottom of your App List, Use the dropdown for Select app and choose Other...

5. Type in vBulletin or the name of your website.

6. Click Generate

7. You will see your generated App Password in the next Screen. Copy it somewhere safe and click Done.



8. Log into your vBulletin Admin Control Panel.

9. Go to Settings -> Options -> Email Options.

10. Set the following options
- "SMTP Email" to Yes.
- "SMTP Host" to smtp.gmail.com
- "SMTP Port" to 587
- "SMTP Username" to your gmail email address ex. [email protected]
- "SMTP Password" to the App Password you created above.
- "SMTP Secure Connection" should be set to TLS.

It should look similar to this:



11. Click Save.

12. Now you want to test it out. In the Admin Control Panel go to Maintenence on the left side and then select Diagnostics.

13. In the Email Diagnostics form, enter any valid email that you can receive email at and click Send. You should get an email shortly.

One note about this technique: You are limited to 2000 emails per day. If you have a high volume site, you would want to look into a valid email relay service and use that instead.

In order to have this setup for a vBulletin Cloud account, a support ticket is necessary.