Guide
Connecting any SMTP relay
Use a relay this product has no card for: host, port, credentials, TLS, and what you give up.
The generic SMTP connector sends through anything that speaks SMTP, including a relay with no card of its own and a server you run.
What you need
A hostname, a port, and usually a username and password. Port 587 with STARTTLS is the normal answer; 465 is implicit TLS; 25 between servers you control.
The connector tests the connection before saving, so a wrong port fails here rather than silently on the first send.
What you give up
A card-backed provider is more than a preset. The API behind it reads verification status, manages identities, and receives bounce and complaint feedback. A plain SMTP relay offers none of that, which has two consequences worth knowing before you choose it.
Verification is yours to do. This product will still check SPF, DKIM, DMARC and rDNS from the outside, so an identity still has to earn its ready state -- but nothing can ask the relay what it thinks.
Feedback is yours to arrange. Without a webhook, bounces arrive only as SMTP errors at send time. Those are read and classified, and they are a thinner signal than an asynchronous bounce report: a message accepted and bounced ten minutes later is invisible.
If the relay is SendGrid
Point the generic connector at SendGrid's SMTP host and its link rewriting is disabled in-band, the same as on the SendGrid card. A link rewritten twice lands on the wrong domain and the click is counted twice.