With site hackers focusing on stealing the email sending capabilities of website servers, it has become more and more common to discover that the Internet at large stops your email message somewhere between your SEND button and the target email box. What’s worse is when this is from a potential sales lead!
Described as a Notification email, this message is usually comprised of all of the information that is submitted in a nice and neat tabular form.
Below are 3 major reasons why email can fail to get to you, and how to fix them. These are the three biggest setup issues I have discovered in my webdesign tenure.
#1 – Your Host is no longer supporting the PHP sender queue. Because of excess and overuse, website hosting services often now neglect and/or no longer support the MAIL send function built into PHP. This is the basic sending tool that many website users have relied on for decades. This lack of support will result in emails being marked as spam, arriving hours after they were sent, or never arriving at all – Solution: Switch to a third party emailing service (MailGun) or use your email system’s SMTP sender (A Plugin like Mail Bank).
#2 – SMTP Sender Setup Error – Setting up an SMTP sender is like configuring your client on your phone or laptop – you have to provide the right server name, a username, a password, and the right security credentials. The Mail Bank plugin, essentially, allows your website to send email from your own email server. The Mail Bank plugin mentioned above has atesting tool that help you set up the right credentials. If your email is failing – run a test!
#3 – Form Fields incomplete at the Sender. No matter what sending technology you are using, if you don’t properly set up the correct send TO email address, and fill out a subject line, you run the risk of failure. Make sure your Send To’s and Subject lines are filled out! If your form notification set up is set wrong or incomplete- you need to check this out.
If I can offer support on your problem – let me know!
