How do I ensure that the email from my website arrives?

Why do website emails sometimes not arrive?

Without an additional plugin, WordPress sends emails directly from the web server. For receiving mail servers (like Gmail, Outlook, and others), this looks like spam: your domain is listed as the sender, but the email does not come from the mail server associated with your domain. Such emails end up in spam or are completely rejected.

What does WP Mail SMTP do?

WP Mail SMTP ensures that your website sends emails through a real mail server, with login credentials, just like your email program does. Receiving servers then see that the email genuinely comes from your domain. This way, it lands much more often directly in the inbox.

We set up WP Mail SMTP for you. The settings are fixed in your website’s configuration. Therefore, on the settings page of the plugin, you will see the message “The value of this field is set using a constant…” next to the fields. That is intentional: you don’t need to and cannot change anything there.

Send a test email

1. Go to WP Mail SMTP → Tools.
2. Open the tab Email Test.
3. Fill in an address at Send to that you can access, for example, your own address.
4. Click on Send Email.

Do you see a message that it was successful and the test email is in your inbox? Then your website can send emails. Are you getting an error message, or is the email in your spam? Take a screenshot of the message and contact us.

The sender: always your own domain

Emails from your website always come from an address on your own domain, for example, info@yourcompany.com. Also for your forms: in a form notification, never use the visitor’s address in From email address, but use Reply-To instead. See set who receives the form messages.

SPF and DKIM (we take care of that)

To prove that emails genuinely come from your domain, there are extra records in your domain’s DNS: SPF and DKIM. This tells your domain: “this mail server is allowed to send emails on my behalf”. We take care of this during setup. If you change anything in your domain’s DNS yourself, please leave these records as they are. Also see linking your domain name.

Not working?

• The test email works, but form messages do not arrive. Then it’s due to the notification or your spam filter. Check I am not receiving messages from my form.
• The test email gives an error message. Take a screenshot and send it to us. We will resolve it.
• The test email ends up in your spam. Mark it as not spam and let us know, then we will check SPF and DKIM.
• A visitor does not receive the password email. Perform the test email. If that works, ask the visitor to check their spam.

Can’t figure it out? Contact us or call 06 35 66 47 73. We are happy to help.