Email Notifications and Email Broadcasts Not Being Received – SMTP Solution

WordPress uses the PHP mail function to send emails by default and WishList Member uses that same function when sending emails. But this email sending function doesn't always work as expected. Perhaps its a case of the Lost Password emails not reaching the inboxes of your users or Email Broadcasts not being consistently delivered. Emails sent from a WordPress site and not being received by users is often due to some common potential reasons.

Reasons Emails Might Not Be Delivered from a WordPress Site

• Some hosting providers will restrict the usage of the email function used to send emails to prevent the possibility of abuse and spam.
  
• Spam filters in place on popular email service providers check incoming emails to monitor if they are sent from an authentic mail server. The default WordPress emails can fail this check and sometimes may not even reach the spam folder.

Select a SMTP Plugin

These types of issues can typically be resolved by using a WordPress SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) plugin to assist in the sending of those emails. These plugins are designed to focus on a higher rate of email deliverability as they send emails using an external service instead of relying on your website's server.

There are a number of plugin options you will see when doing a search for “SMTP” in the WordPress plugins directory. The WP Mail SMTP plugin is a popular option as it can be set up relatively easily.

The use of an SMTP plugin will typically resolve issues with emails being sent by WordPress (and by extension, WishList Member) and not reaching the inboxes.

Installing and configuring a WordPress SMTP plugin is recommended if you're experiencing issues with email deliverability. Once installed and configured, a quick test of sending emails can be run to determine if the issues are resolved.

After the SMTP plugin is set up, sending a test email using the SMTP plugin is also recommended. Usually, if the test email is not sent, the SMTP plugin will show it failed to send and will display suggestions related to how to fix the issue.

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Additional details on WordPress SMTP options and settings can be found in this article. Please Note: this is not an article our team has written and is located on a 3rd party site.

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Logging Sent Emails

A plugin like WP Mail Logging can also be helpful when email deliverability is being investigated as it can be used to check which emails are being sent by WordPress. The plugin records the emails being sent by WordPress and can be referenced quickly at a glance. You can check the list of sent emails if you ever have a case of a user stating they haven't received an expected email.