Are you facing the WordPress not sending email error? Well, you are not the only one that faces this issue.
Almost every WordPress user has to deal with this “WordPress not sending email issue” at least once in their lifetime.
The majority of managed WordPress hosting companies do not offer email hosting. Nonetheless, your WordPress installation can send emails.
It is not typically a server issue that can cause WordPress not to send emails, but rather an incorrectly configured email settings on the WordPress installation.
In this post, we’ll share with you some tips for figuring out why WordPress isn’t sending emails, and how you can fix the problem. Let us show you how to fix your WordPress or WooCommerce site’s email problems.
Furthermore, we’ll analyze some of the most popular contact form plugins and understand how each might cause email delivery issues.
Table of contents
The most common cause of emails not being delivered is that your WordPress hosting server is not configured properly to use the PHP mail() function.
Many email service providers such as Gmail and others use a number of filters and tools to reduce email spam, even if your hosting account is configured to do so.
These anti-spamming softwares try to identify that an email is actually coming from the location that it claims to be from. WordPress-generated emails often fail this test.
This means that emails sent to users from your WordPress website (by using a plugin like contact form or sending an admin notification, for example) are unlikely to even make it to their inbox, at all.
For this reason, we don’t recommend using WordPress for email newsletters..!
Make sure that emails sent from WordPress don’t end up in spam folders.
Users who report WordPress is not sending emails may simply be experiencing spam problems.Tell them to check their spam folders for WordPress emails.
Several email clients might view WordPress emails as spam because they’re automated.
Email clients sometimes regard emails sent by contact form plugins as spam.
Usually, email clients mark them as spam because of the difference in addresses between the “From” address and the delivery box address. This is usually the case when you set up your contact form to send emails. In the “From” field, the user entered their email address. Although the email is sent from WordPress, it is flagged as suspicious by email clients.
Consequently, it will be classified as junk mail.
Hopefully, tweaking the settings of your contact form plugin will fix this issue.
Ask Your Users to Whitelist the Email Address
To avoid having your email address go to spam, ask your users to whitelist you by including your email address in their contacts. In Gmail, the move to the inbox should mean that future emails from that address won’t be moved to spam.
If you want to be safe, add the email address to your contacts as well.
Consider reviewing the email address your site is sending emails from. This will typically be the address you used to create the site.
If it’s info@mysite.com, contact@mysite.com, sales@mysite.com or something similar, email providers might just assume it’s spam.
Changing the email address to something more professional will help you avoid missing any responses.
Please make sure that any email sent to that address is diverted to your normal email address.
An alias can be created for your email address to allow this to happen.
If your emails aren’t sending from your site at all, then you need to use a third-party SMTP provider and link it with your site so it will send emails again.
In the industry, SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is the standard for sending emails. In contrast to the PHP mail() function, SMTP uses proper authentication, so emails can be bettered delivered.
It is possible to use SMTP providers for free (such as the Gmail SMTP server): so you don’t have to spend any money on this.
If you configured your server to send email but entries to forms aren’t being sent, it probably means the form settings need to be tweaked.
Here is what you need to do for the two most popular forms plugins to get those emails to send again. If you are using another plugin, please shoot us a message and we will add it to the article.
I assume you have tried adding SMTP or checking your spam folder, but still, the emails do not arrive.
One of the most popular and oldest free WordPress forms plugins is Contact Form 7.
In case you’re having problems with it sending emails (and you know the server is sending them), you’ll simply need to change the email address that emails are sent from.
Go to your WordPress Admin > Contact > Contact Forms > Mail
In the From field, enter the admin email address of your site, not the email address you entered in the form. That can only be used in the Reply to field, not the From field.
You shouldn’t use the same email address in both fields. If you use the same email address for your site, you should use a different one.
You can now save your changes.
Fill out the form to test everything. Hopefully it should work!
The Ninja Form plugin is another widely used and most popular WordPress form plugin. They have provided a number of free add-ons that enhance its features. They can be accessed freely from WordPress plugin directory.
In case you are experiencing issues related to Ninja Forms emails, we recommend you try the SendWP plugin ($9), developed by the same ninja team.
SendWP is specially developed for SMTP servers to work properly on any web servers.
WordPress sometimes fails to send emails, and you might not understand why. The reason for this error, one of the most common with WordPress, may be because your emails are going to spam, because your server is not set up to send emails, or because the settings in your contact form need to be updated.
You can diagnose the issue and fix your WordPress site’s inability to send emails by following the steps above. Hopefully, your emails will start working soon!
If you feel we’ve missed something, let us know and we will update this article!
You might also want to check our troubleshooting WordPress sections!
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