PLEASE NOTE: These forums are no longer utilized and are provided as an archive for informational purposes only. All support issues will be handled via email using our support ticket system. For more detailed information on this change, please see this blog post.

Email Notifications not working

  1. I have a new site I'm developing at http://www.signstoyouco.com and trying to incorporate a contact page throughout the site, I receive the contact requests through Wordpress admin instantly, but I am either not receiving the email notifications or they are extremely delayed when testing. I have wordpress and godaddy linux hosting. Any suggestions?

    Posted 13 years ago on Thursday February 17, 2011 | Permalink
  2. Who hosts your email? Is your email hosted with GoDaddy or do you host your email with a 3rd party service like Google Apps?

    Have you tested notifications with multiple email addresses or only one? Test the notifications using a Yahoo or GMail email account not associated with your domain name. Also be sure to check the spam box/spam filter to see if it was flagged as spam.

    There are a variety of reasons why notifications would not be received and all of them revolve around web server configuration settings. The simplest involves spam filters.

    Posted 13 years ago on Thursday February 17, 2011 | Permalink
  3. My email is hosted with godaddy as well. I checked my spam folder in my email and nothing in there.

    Posted 13 years ago on Thursday February 17, 2011 | Permalink
  4. If you send us a WordPress admin login for this site we can take a look and run a test.

    It's possible you will have to install the WP Mail SMTP plugin which forces WordPress to send mail via SMTP. This is common on some GoDaddy hosting configurations.

    It's also possible that GoDaddy is queuing the email. They are known to hold back email and queue it rather than send it right away.

    GoDaddy accounts for more hosting related support issues than all other hosting providers by a large margin.

    Posted 13 years ago on Thursday February 17, 2011 | Permalink
  5. Gmail doesn't receive them either. I installed the WP Mail SMTP, but have no idea how to configure it. Maybe you have some other suggestions before we configure that? Where can I send the Wordpress login for the site...I don't feel comfortable posting it on an open forum where anybody can see. Thanks

    Posted 13 years ago on Thursday February 17, 2011 | Permalink
  6. Just received it in gmail as I was typing the last message! It was delayed a few minutes, but I did receive it. How do I make this work for my godaddy business email?

    Posted 13 years ago on Thursday February 17, 2011 | Permalink
  7. If you received it in GMail then that means it is being sent by Gravity Forms. You may want to make sure GoDaddy doesn't have some sort of spam filter setup and you may have to contact them to determine why it did not arrive when it arrived fine at your GMail account.

    It's possible they may be rejecting it because it wasn't sent via SMTP.

    In order to setup WP Mail SMTP you would have to contact GoDaddy and get the correct SMTP settings and enter them on the configuration/settings page of that plugin. After you do that, there is a "Test Email" option on the WP Mail SMTP plugin configuration page where you can test to see if the SMTP is working by sending a test email. You can test this while on the phone with GoDaddy support while setting up the SMTP settings that way you know right away if it's working. If the test email on the WP Mail SMTP plugin settings page works, the Gravity Forms emails will too.

    GoDaddy is known for queuing email being sent by PHP and not sending it right away. They hold on to it and send it in batches. It is annoying that they do this, and that is probably why it was delayed in arriving.

    Posted 13 years ago on Thursday February 17, 2011 | Permalink
  8. I just got off the phone with Godaddy and they said their email is functioning properly and their is no queing...which they are correct because I have no problem sending and receiving normal godaddy account emails non related to a Gravity Form. They also said they do not support 3rd party plugins, so there is nothing they can do to help any further, unless I switch to a form mailer plugin they support. It seems you both are pointing the finger at each other, which I don't have time for! So, with that being said what else can you do to help? I purchased your Developer package with the intentions of utilizing your product on many websites...I don't want to be forced to get rid of Gravity Forms and switch to a form mailer Godaddy supports that functions properly. Thanks

    Posted 13 years ago on Friday February 18, 2011 | Permalink
  9. @signstoyou If the email was functioning properly you would be able to receive it. You are receiving it at your GMail account which means the email is being sent by Gravity Forms.

    We aren't pointing the finger because we don't want to help you with this issue, we are pointing the finger at GoDaddy because we've had to deal with GoDaddy specific support related issues for the last year and a half and know what we are talking about.

    The only thing I can suggest is to setup WP Mail SMTP. I've suggested it multiple times now in this thread. If you setup WP Mail SMTP properly to where you receive the "Test Email" it sends through it's test email functionality... you will be able to receive notifications. SMTP is a more reliable way of sending email. PLEASE setup this plugin and make sure you get the correct SMTP settings from GoDaddy to do so. You will know they are correct when you can use the "Test Email" functionality that it has, so if GoDaddy tells you they gave you the correct SMTP setttings but the "Test Email" functionality of that plugin doesn't work... they didn't give you the correct information.

    This is some sort of web server configuration issue and i'm not really surprised GoDaddy was of no help because their support never is of any help for anything but the most basic issues. If it requires them to think and actually look into something rather than read off of prompts on their computer, they aren't going to help you.

    GoDaddy hosting accounts for the majority of email related support requests for Gravity Forms. It's not a host we would recommend anyone use because of the strange support issues that arise and the complete lack of assistance their support provides in fixing issues.

    Posted 13 years ago on Friday February 18, 2011 | Permalink
  10. Do I have to ask Godaddy for these SMTP settings or can I find them myself in my godaddy hosting configuration somewhere?

    Posted 13 years ago on Friday February 18, 2011 | Permalink
  11. @signstoyou You would have to get the proper SMTP settings from GoDaddy. It varies from host to host. You may have to contact GoDaddy support directly to get the proper SMTP settings if they aren't available in your control panel.

    What I would suggest doing is installing the WP Mail SMTP plugin and once it is installed, activate it and go to the Settings page. Call GoDaddy support and with them on the phone, ask for the proper SMTP settings. There aren't that many settings/options for the WP Mail SMTP plugin.

    Then, with them still on the phone, use the Test Email functionality that is at the bottom of the WP Mail SMTP plugin settings page to test those SMTP settings. If they are correct, the test email will send. You need to do this with GoDaddy support on the phone that way if the settings aren't correct you can tell them so right away so you don't have as much back and forth with their support.

    Posted 13 years ago on Friday February 18, 2011 | Permalink
  12. I was able to get the Gravity Form to function properly. The SMTP plugin had nothing to do with it however. Under "Notifications" for the "Notification to Administrator" the "From Name" and "From Email" cannot be anything chosen from the drop down menu and has to stay the default "select a Name Field". I manually named the "From Name" 'Website' that way when I receive it in my inbox I know it came from the website. The for "From Email" I manually named that my Adminstrator Email address.

    Posted 13 years ago on Monday February 21, 2011 | Permalink
  13. FYI - just as a red flag - it is also possible that your GoDaddy mail servers might get / already are blacklisted - I am actually resolving this issue for a client now - their WordPress install was using Contact Form 7 which was using their GoDaddy SMTP servers and all their notifications were being put into spam. I switched them to GravityForms and am using WP Mail SMTP to send from a new / whitelisted SMTP Server.

    Posted 13 years ago on Friday February 25, 2011 | Permalink
  14. PS - here's the article that talks about GoDaddy's mailservers being blacklisted
    http://www.spamresource.com/2010/10/godaddy-blacklisted-by-ahbl.html

    Posted 13 years ago on Friday February 25, 2011 | Permalink
  15. @jakilevy Thanks for the information. That is good to know. It's another example of why not to use GoDaddy. They have to be the most frustrating web host to deal with. They account, by far, for the majority of hosting specific issues that we encounter.

    Posted 13 years ago on Friday February 25, 2011 | Permalink
  16. SMTP server settings for the WP Mail SMTP Plug used with GoDaddy are here on the Wordpress.Org site in case anyone else is trying to deal with setting it up:

    http://wordpress.org/support/topic/smtp-settings-for-go-daddy-email-accounts

    Jonathan, AtlantaWebDesignGA.com

    Posted 13 years ago on Monday March 14, 2011 | Permalink
  17. I forgot to add that you usually should not need to install the SMTP Plug In to have Gravity Forms send email out on a GoDaddy hosted WordPress site. I have many WordPress sites using GravityForms on GoDaddy servers and sites usually send mail OK from Gravity Forms without installing any plug-ins for mail.

    In my sites, the From email address in Gravity Forms Notification is @thesamedomain.com as the website, so the web domain and email domain are the same, not some foreign domain. Almost all my client sites use Google Apps as their mail server setup on their website domain, and Google Apps MX records are defined in the GoDaddy domain name in the Advanced DNS setup in GoDaddy since GoDaddy is the registrar. Perhaps because the email domain is the same as the site domain, or because GoDaddy DNS has the MX records to authenticate the email domain against, is the reason GoDaddy's email server authenticates the email and lets it go out of their relay server without any hassles. Test messages generally arrive in the Google Apps inbox about 4 minutes after the form is submitted.

    Posted 13 years ago on Monday March 14, 2011 | Permalink
  18. Thanks Jonathan, for the SMTP settings for GoDaddy. That will certainly be helpful. We plan on working with a contact at GoDaddy directly also to try and work through some of the issues users encounter with them.

    Posted 13 years ago on Monday March 14, 2011 | Permalink

This topic has been resolved and has been closed to new replies.