WPForms Not Sending Email Notifications
On free WPForms, a notification that never arrives is a message you can’t get back. Here is what to do first, which settings to check, and how to tell a settings problem from a sending problem.
WPForms not sending email? A visitor fills in your form, sees the thank-you message, and the notification never reaches you. So you go looking for what they wrote, and on the free version there’s nowhere to look.
Maybe it arrived fine yesterday and you’ve changed nothing. Either way, you’re wondering how many enquiries you’ve missed.
None of this is your doing, and the next message doesn’t have to go the same way. Here’s how to put a second inbox on watch, then tell a settings problem from a sending one.
WPForms not sending email? In the free version, an email that never arrives is a lost message
The free version, WPForms Lite, keeps no copy of what your visitors send. The notification email is the only one. WPForms’ support team says so on the wordpress.org forum: “WPForms Lite doesn’t store form entries in the database, unfortunately we’re not able to recover the data from that submission if the notification email wasn’t received”.
Your form won’t tell you, because WPForms hands each notification to WordPress’s mail function and shows the success message whatever happens next. When we made the email fail, the visitor still saw “Thanks for contacting us! We will be in touch with you shortly.”
Don’t trust WPForms > Entries, either. The entries it lists in the free version carry the notice “You’re Viewing Sample Data”, and none is yours.
Add a second address first, so you notice a failure sooner
Send each notification to two inboxes at different mail providers. When a message turns up in one and not the other, you know something’s wrong.
- Go to WPForms > All Forms and open your form in the builder.
- Click the Settings tab, then Notifications.
- In Send To Email Address, type both addresses with a comma between them, then save the form.
That’s it, as long as it’s a comma. In our test, two addresses with a space or a semicolon in its place were fused into one wrong address, and the only email was sent there. The visitor saw the success message, and nobody was warned.
This isn’t a fix. If the trouble is how your site sends email, both copies can fail together.
What WPForms says about Form Entry Backups
WPForms Lite also offers Form Entry Backups, off by default, under WPForms > Settings > General (the Enable Entry Backups toggle). The plugin says: “Free backups save every submission automatically, so when email notifications fail, your data is safe.”
Switching it on means agreeing “to share your information with WPForms”. WPForms’ Lite Connect doc says entries are backed up to WPForms’ servers, only those submitted after you enable it, that backups expire after 1 year, and that restoring them needs a paid license. We haven’t switched it on, so read the doc before you decide.
Then rule out four WPForms settings
The first three are on that same Notifications screen.
Enable Notifications is switched off
This toggle is on by default. When it’s off, no email is created, and your visitor still sees the success message. Switch it on and save the form.
Send To Email Address is empty, or nobody reads it
The default is {admin_email}, your site’s admin email address (under Settings > General in WordPress). Make sure somebody reads that inbox.
If the field is empty, a warning appears under it: “No recipient is set. This notification won’t be delivered.” The form still saves and nothing is sent, so type the address that should get the notification and save the form.
From Email isn’t on your site’s domain
From Email defaults to {admin_email}. When that address isn’t on your site’s domain, a warning under the field says so and adds, in the plugin’s words: “This can cause your notification emails to be blocked or marked as spam.”
In our test, the notification was still handed to WordPress with that address on it, warning or not. An admin email on another domain triggers the warning on a form you never touched.
Enter an address at your site’s own domain, and keep your visitor’s address in Reply-To.
Optimize Email Sending is holding the email back
Go to WPForms > Settings, open the Email tab and find Optimize Email Sending, which is off by default. In our test with it on, the email wasn’t handed to WordPress when the form was submitted, and waited as a background task.
Switch it off and click Save Settings. Then submit your form and check your inbox and spam folder.
A free mail log shows what WordPress was asked to send
It also shows whether WordPress reported an error. Look for the form’s own notification, not a test email.
- Install and activate Check & Log Email.
- Submit your form.
- Open Check & Log Email > Email Logs, find your notification by its Subject, and read the icon under Sent Status.
| What the log shows | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| A cross | WordPress reported an error. Hover over the cross to read it. | Fix the sending side. |
| A check mark, but no email | WordPress reported no error. It doesn’t mean the email arrived. | Recheck Send To and From Email, then fix the sending side. |
If your notification isn’t listed, go back over the settings above, Optimize Email Sending first.
When the settings are right, fix the sending side
If your settings check out and email still goes missing, the trouble comes after WPForms. WPForms support tells forum users that “the emails sent from WordPress are not authenticated”, so “they are likely to be filtered by the receiving mail server”. It’s the same place we end up when Ninja Forms emails aren’t sending.
Google’s sender guidelines require everyone who emails Gmail accounts to set up SPF or DKIM authentication, the DNS records that prove an email came from your domain.
WordPress email that gets blocked or filtered is the problem we built SendWP for, so it’s what we’d suggest, and it’s a paid service. Once your site is connected, the email WordPress sends goes out through SendWP instead of your web host, and since WPForms hands its notification to WordPress, that goes the same way. Here’s how to install the SendWP plugin and connect it:
- Go to Plugins > Add Plugin, search SendWP, click Install Now, then Activate.
- In the notice that appears, click Connect or register.
- On the Tools > SendWP screen, click Connect to SendWP, then register or log in and follow the prompts to authorize the connection.
- Submit your form again and check both inboxes.
SPF and DKIM records are a separate step, and SendWP helps you with it.
Keep the second address on your form, then fix the cause you found
Nothing here brings back a message that’s lost. But the next time a notification goes missing, you’ll have two inboxes to compare and a log to read.
The four settings and the comma are yours to fix, and they cost nothing. If the cause turns out to be the sending side, SendWP can send your form notifications for you and help you set up the SPF and DKIM records Gmail asks for. We believe it’s the best option, it’s a paid service, and you can get started for $1 your first month.
