BrightSide is capable of sending emails to your guests, owners, employees, or someone else. First, you must enter the settings for your email service in BrightSide. In this tutorial, we will show you how to setup the following:

• SMTP server information.
• Email service’s port number.
• Security type, either SSL or TLS.
• Authentication requirements.
• Username and password.
• Designate where copies of emails are sent, if needed.

HINT: All outgoing email templates are setup in Guest Letter Templates, even emails intended for owners, managers, housekeepers, etc.

BrightSide is not a full-fledged email client like Outlook or Gmail. Our email feature is limited to automatically sending predefined emails at predetermined times or events. There are occasions when you may need to send one manually, and it is possible.

BrightSide does not receive emails, it only sends them. If a recipient replies to your email, the response email will be routed to the email address you included in your company setup. So be sure to include a monitored email address there. If necessary, we can add an alternate “reply to” email address in the system for you.

Since all emails originating from BrightSide are from predefined templates, copies are not kept on our server. However, a record of it being sent is part of the reservation notes. If you want to receive a copy of the email, you may provide an email address in these settings and BrightSide will send you a copy.

HINT: If you deal with a lot of reservations daily, it may be a good idea to skip receiving copies of all outgoing email. Potentially you could receive hundreds of emails a day, or more.

Navigate to Setup > Settings > Email

Your email service can provide you with their outgoing server details. To avoid being listed on SPAM detection services, you should seriously consider using a paid email service like MailGun rather than utilizing a free Gmail account. Free Gmail accounts also limit the number of emails you may send in an hour, sometimes causing their filters to interrupt sending your email. If you want to use Gmail, upgrade to a business account.

SMTP Server: enter your outgoing server information here.
Port: this is the port number provided by your outgoing email service.
Security Type: not all servers require encryption. If yours does, select it here.
Require Authentication?: check this.
Username: enter the complete username for your email provider.
Password: enter the password for your email account.

Currently, BrightSide is capable of sending copies of two different types of emails: guest emails and work order emails. Guest emails include any predefined templates you create in BrightSide. Work order emails are similar, but go out to the people working on the properties you manage. If you want to receive a copy of every guest email and every work order email, tell us where to send them here.