Are you having trouble getting emails from Contact Form 7 to your inbox?
You can send email notifications to yourself and the individuals who submit your form using Contact Form 7. However, if your website is not properly configured, it is common to experience problems with Contact Form 7 emails not sending.
We will describe what’s wrong. We’ll demonstrate a few quick fixes for your Contact Form 7 emails.
Contact form 7 Not Sending Any Email – Finding the Reasons
You can figure out two primary reasons behind Contact Form 7 not sending emails. The reasons are as follows:
1- Email Notifications Considered Spam
Contact Form 7 may occasionally send emails without any issues. Those emails may go to the spam folder, which remains invisible to you because spam emails are a major concern, email services such as Gmail include automatic spam filters that mark emails as spam without human intervention.
If you use the correct reply email or don’t use email validation strategies like DKIM, your Contact Form 7 emails could easily avoid falling into this trap.
2- PHP Mail Function Not Supported by the Web Host
By default, Contact Form 7 uses the wp mail function to send emails, which is dependent on your hosting server’s PHP mail function. Because many hosting companies do not support the PHP mail function, WordPress cannot notify you of any message left on your website.
Even if your host does support PHP mail, emails sent using this approach are more likely to be marked as spam due to PHP mail’s lack of validation.
Above are the two major reasons your Contact Form 7 is not sending emails from your WordPress site. However, you don’t need to panic; we will explain how you can fix the issue in the next section.
Fixing The Contact Form 7 Not sending emails Error
You can use the following ways to increase the email deliverability of your Contact Form 7 emails:
Fix No.1: Change Email Address
Changing the email address won’t solve every issue. However, it’s worth trying immediately because it’s simple to implement.
Your emails frequently end up in spam folders because the email does not precisely reflect the sending domain.
To resolve the issue, head on over to your WordPress dashboard and select Contact -> Contact Forms:
- Open the form that is creating the issues.
- Head on to the Mail tab under the form’s settings.
- Scroll down and select the “From” option.
If there is a problem with your email, you might see the message “The web domain does not own the sender’s email address” in your configuration.
Contact Form 7 will prompt you to update the email address by displaying an error in the form’s settings.
You will need a company email account with your domain in it in order to fix the issue.
If your domain is wordpress@wordpress-224605-958275.cloudways.com, for instance, your company email address should be wordpress@wordpress-224605-958275.cloudwaysapps.com
To create an email address for your business, follow these steps:
- Go to the WordPress dashboard → Contact Forms → Mail → From,
- Now, insert the new business email address, and click “Save.”
By now, you will see there is no error.
2- Install an SMTP Plugin as a Dedicated Email Delivering Service
The hosting service provider for your WordPress website is configured to host your WordPress website, not send emails through Contact Form 7.
Use any email-sending service provider if you have to use Contact Form 7 emails to be more dependable. These servers, as opposed to your hosting server, are designed mainly for email sending (and keeping emails out of spam bins).
You can use a WordPress SMTP plugin to connect your WordPress website to one of these specific email delivery services.
WordPress provides a number of SMTP plugins. For this article, we are using the Postman SMTP plugin.
Make sure you back up your WordPress site before installing the plugin. New plugins can crash your website. You can quickly restore your website to working condition if you have a backup.
Postman SMTP Settings
Setup Wizard
Under the plugin’s sub-menu, select the Options tab to access settings. The options for the below-mentioned parts are identified here:
Account – Select SMTP or the vendor-specific API
Fallback – If you enable this option and if your emails fail to send, Post SMTP will attempt to use the SMTP service. Also, it is possible to choose to enable or disable SMTP validation.
Message – Enter your email address to identify the email sender and the appropriate recipient. Some other options can be disabling email authentication and inserting extra email IDs (CC & BCC). Further, you can specify customized headers, one per line.
Logging – Configuration of the delivery audit log.
Advance
- Network settings: Increase the timeouts if your host intermittently fails to send mail.
- Miscellaneous Settings: Define PHP Log level, Delivery mode and temporary directory, and the option to enable or disable Stealth Mode.
Notifications – Choose the notification-sending service to get alerts related to failed emails.
Creating App Password in the Google Account
A separate password for your Google account that is usable by the app is known as an app password. The methods for creating the Google account’s app password are listed below.
NOTE
You can change the primary password and opt for the app password option if you get an error warning in your email logs.
Test Email
You can use this tool to test emails by sending them. Postman will give up if there is an issue after 1 min. When sending a test email, take the following actions:
Insert the email address of the person to whom you will send the test email to specify the recipient.
See your test email’s status before sending the message.
See the test email’s transcript here.
3- Use Different Contact Forms Extension
Do you still need to receive emails from Contact Form 7? Speak with their support staff if you can. The only other option is to deactivate the present form and use a different contact form plugin if it doesn’t work.
There are loads of free plugins for a contact form that are easy to use. You’ll undoubtedly find some form builder that will work for you.
Wrap Up
Some WordPress-shared hosting companies frequently restrict outgoing emails by blocking specific ports. They are commonly regarded as having faulty mail servers even when they are not doing this. Because of this, SMTP is the best option if your Contact Form 7 email needs to be delivered or there is a significant delay in sending emails.