Troubleshooting Ninja Form Submission Notification Emails

So, you’ve set up some forms, and now you’re seeing submissions arrive on your Ninja Forms submissions page. Great! But something is going on, because you’re not getting notified by email that there is a new form submission. Let’s take a look at why form submission notification emails might not arrive in your inbox so you can quickly act on them.

Ninja Forms, like many other WordPress plugins, relies on the mail sending functionality within in your WordPress installation. When your WordPress site cannot send email, neither can Ninja Forms.

This is actually a fairly common occurrence for new WordPress sites that haven’t been properly configured to send email. Luckily, we can easily solve the problem of WordPress sites not sending email. This post gives you an overview of WordPress email deliverability and some easy steps towards solving these email problems.

The trouble with email

While your email inbox may feel like a place of simplicity, getting those emails delivered is a tangled network of numerous services where any number of issues can occur. In most cases, however, there are just a few simple tweaks that will have your site sending emails. At the very least, we’ll find ways to isolate where you might find problems so you can work with your hosting provider to solve the problem.

How WordPress email works

WordPress uses the PHP mail() function to send its emails. PHP is the language of WordPress, so sending email using this function is the default for WordPress sites. However, each hosting provider needs to ensure that the PHP mail function is properly configured.

Why WordPress PHP Mail is often blocked

Even if your site’s PHP mail() function is properly configured, many email services like Outlook, Gmail, and others, detect methods of how an email is sent and often block mail sent by the PHP mail function.

You have spammers to thank for this particular problem. A hacked site has often used to host spam mailers using a database of email addresses and a PHP script that loops through that list to send out spam.

As such, email sent by the PHP mail() function, the default on your WordPress site, is often blocked as it fails the stringent tests used by email providers to protect their users from spam.

It doesn’t only affect your Ninja Forms notification emails, it also blocks password reset emails and other administrative notifications sent by your WordPress site. Imagine if one of your users, or even you as an administrator, lost your password and couldn’t get the password reset emails.

Using an SMTP plugin for email deliverability

To solve this problem, we recommend using an SMTP plugin for your site to ensure email deliverability. SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is the standard for sending emails, and when you send an email from your email account, SMTP is the method that delivers your email from your SMTP server to your recipient’s email server and eventually their inbox.

SMTP uses authentication methods, which means that as long as the server is secured, the probability of hackers and spammers using an SMTP service is relatively low. Your emails get where they’re going.

Even if your hosting provider is blocking emails sent by PHP, an SMTP email plugin connected to a SMTP mail provider will bypass those blocks. Because these services use a different protocol, or method, of sending emails, your emails can get through.

SMTP plugins you can use to fix the WordPress not sending emails problem

There are a number of services that will fix the problem of WordPress not sending emails. Each of these have a different pricing model, and for most transactional emails (such as form submissions, receipts, and administrative emails), the cost is negligible for most sites.

SendWP. Using SendWP is the easiest way to get started fixing the WordPress email problem, and you can do so right in your Ninja Forms dashboard. Here’s how.

SendWP has been specifically designed to work with WordPress and unlike these services, SendWP takes only a few minutes to install and configure and requires absolutely no technical expertise.

While SendWP is by far the easiest method to fix the email sending problem and our recommendation for most users, there are a few other options that require some technical aptitude. These options include:

• Sendinblue SMTP. Sendinblue has their own WordPress SMTP plugin, and they have a generous free tier to help you get started.
• Mailgun SMTP. Mailgun has their own WordPress SMTP plugin to go with their transactional email service.
• Amazon SES. Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) is another popular email sending service which can be very cost effective. This will require the WP Offload SES plugin and configuration of an IAM user in your AWS account.

These options don’t have the ease of use, seamless integration, and security features as SendWP, but they might be right for you. As a caution, if you’re a new user for one of these free services and your website needs to send many transactional emails per day (this would include everything from password resets, administrative notices, and form submissions), you may be throttled as a new user on the free plan.

How to test your WordPress settings

If you’re not sure if your WordPress site is sending emails or not, the best thing to do is to perform some tests. We can do this with Ninja Forms.

Install an email logging plugin. There are a couple email logging plugins that can track emails sent by your WordPress site. We recommend using either Email Log or Check & Log Email.

Check your WordPress administrative email address. Make sure that you have your WordPress administrative email address set up to send to you. If someone else set up your site, they might have entered something else for your default administrative email. You can check this on your WordPress settings page. Go to Settings > General and look for “Administration Email Address.” This is where your form submissions will be mailed to.

Create a new form from a Ninja Forms template. A simple contact form from the Ninja Forms templates is a great first start. This will automatically have administrative notifications configured. You can double check this in the Emails & Actions section of your form. We recommend using a template because this is already configured. If you start with a blank form instead, you’ll need to set this up.

Create a page and include your test form. Complete a form as if you’re an end user, ensuring that you complete all required fields. Click submit and make sure you see the success message.

Check your submissions page. Using the dropdown at the top of the page, select your test form. The submissions page will show you all of the submissions. Did the form submission arrive there? Great! We know Ninja Forms is working. If not, reach out to Ninja Forms support for assistance.

Check your administrative email’s inbox. Did you receive the email? If yes, you’re ahead of the game! Congratulations.

Gmail did not receive form submissions email

If you’re using Gmail for your administrative email address, check your promotions tab. If you’ve found your form submission under the promotions tab, drag the email to your primary inbox so that Gmail recognizes that you want emails from your WordPress site to arrive in your primary inbox.

Check your spam folder. In some Gmail installations, the spam and trash folders are hidden under “More.”

Even then, you might have to scroll in the left navigation to find the spam folder. If you’ve found your form submission email there, let Gmail know it isn’t spam by click the “Report not spam” button at the top of the email.

Check your email log

If you’re still not seeing your form submission email arriving in your inbox, promotions tab, or even your spam folder, check your mail log plugin results. For this example, we used the Email Log plugin. This powerful plugin can tell you if your emails are not being sent and why. In the example below, we see that the mail function has not been configured for this server. In order to fix the problem on this site, we’ll need to use and configure one of the SMTP email plugins.

Do you see your email submission on the mail log? If you see your submission on the mail log without an error message, but the email is still not arriving in your email inbox, there could be an issue with your hosting provider. Escalating the issue to your hosting provider can help.

Want to go deeper?

If you’d like more detailed tutorials on any of the mail services and their WordPress plugins, drop a note in the comments below and let us know. You can also review our email documentation which can be helpful when troubleshooting more specific issues. We’d be happy to dive deeper into whichever services will help you deliver emails more seamlessly to your end users.