Resolving problems with email

Posted by:

Are you not receiving the emails that you configured? if so that could be caused due 2 reasons:

  1. There is an issue with the plugin generating the email
  2. The email was generated but your site is unable to send it or the email is not being received

In this tutorial, you are going to learn how to find what kind of issue you are facing and how to fix it.

1. There is an issue with the plugin generating the email

How to know if you are having this issue?

The easiest way to find out is by following these steps:

  1. Enable the plugin log
  2. Do a test submission
  3. Check the log and look for the text “WordPress was able to request the email to be sent” If you find this text the plugin is able to generate the email and you are not having this issue.

How to fix this issue

Most likely the log will have more information about what is causing the issue so please check the log and if you are not able to fix it yourself create a support tread or ticket and share the log in it

2.- Your site was generated but your site is unable to send it or the email is not being received

You might not be receiving the email due to these reasons

  1. Your site is not able to send emails
  2. The email is being blocked
  3. There is an issue with the receiving email

How to check if your site is not able to send emails

To check if your site is able to send emails you can use a plugin like test email to send a basic email. If you are not able to receive that email either your site might not be able to send emails.

How to fix my site if it is not able to send emails

If your site is not able to send emails you might be able to request your hosting support to enable them or teach you how to do it. Another thing you could do is use a plugin like Easy WP SMTP to enable emailing on your site.


How to check if the email was blocked

If you already made sure that your site is able to send emails but you are still not receiving the email that the plugin sends the email might be blocked.

The first (and most frequent) issue is an incorrect from email address

The most frequent cause of this issue is that your site is configured to send the email from a different email than the one you configured to use. So for example, if your site is configured to send emails with the address “my@address.com” but you configured your email to be sent using the email “myother@emailaddress.com”, this could cause your email to be blocked.

So the first thing that you want to do is make sure that the “From Email Address” box is empty (so it uses the default email address) and try again.


The second issue is that the receiving email is not working or is blocking the email

Especially if you have a custom email address (like jhon@mycompany.com) your email might be sent correctly but the receiving email is blocking it.

To check if this is the issue try to send the email to another address (preferably to a popular email address like gmail) and check if you are able to receive it there. If so there might be something wrong with the receiving email so you might need to contact the email support team and ask them why you are not able to receive the email or send the email to a different email.

You can also try the third issue to find out why it is being blocked.


The third issue is that the email is being blocked by some weird rule

If you are not able to receive the email even with the “From email address box” empty the email could be blocked due to a different reason, The reasons highly depend on the email provider that is used to both receive the email and send it, For example, there are business emails providers that block the email if it contains specific words or texts or if they contain attachments.

To check if your email is being blocked do the following:

  1. Install the plugin “Send email from admin” This is a plugin that will let you send emails manually directly from the WordPress dashboard.
  2. Send a basic email. By basic email, I mean something with a basic (only alphanumeric characters without symbols) subject and message
  3. If you are not able to receive even the basic email maybe your site is not able to send emails (check the “your site is unable to send” section)
  4. If you are able to receive the basic email generate an email similar to the one that you are trying to send with the plugin (with the same content, subject, attachments, and sent to the same email address)
  5. If after creating an identical email you are able to receive it then the plugin most likely has an issue sending it (check the section “There is an issue with the plugin generating the email”) but if you are not receiving it then start making changes to the email (like remove the attachment and change the subject, message or the email address that is receiving the email) until you are able to receive it, this will let you know what is causing the issue. After finding the issue contact your email provider and explain the issue to find a solution, or try with another email provider.

0