The Issue
Over the last year, we have encountered more and more reports from website admins that they are not receiving email notifications from their website forms.
Why It Is Occurring
The issue occurs because email notifications are being sent from the website using a website server instead of an email server. This behavior is flagged as spam by the inbox, so the emails are either getting dumped into the spam folder or they are being blocked and not getting through at all.
This issue appears to occur more with older free legacy email accounts like aol.com, hotmail.com, or yahoo.com. It seems the website server send function combined with one of these types of email accounts is more likely to get blocked and not even make it into the spam folder.
The Solution
We can’t alter/control how your inbox filters the emails coming in, but we have found a solution to reroute the form notification emails through an email server instead of a website server.
Three-Step Process
- Install the WordPress Plugin WP Mail SMTP.
- Set up a mailing service called Send in Blue.
- Enter the API Key from Send in Blue into the WP Mail SMTP settings.
Cost to Client Hosting Their Website With LaLa – Increasing Monthly Fee by $1
We will include the setup of this service as part of your monthly hosting fee – you will not be charged anything extra. LaLa Projects will incur more monthly fees for the Send in Blue email server service, so to offset the expense we will increase our monthly service fee by $1.
Cost to Clients Hosting Their Website Elsewhere – Please Contact Us if You Would Like Assistance
This will be determined on a client-by-client basis. Since you don’t have a monthly contract with us, this is considered AdHoc work. Please contact us if you would like help implementing this solution to your website.
Other Tools
Filter Your Spam Folder
If the email notifications are going into your spam folder, it is possible to create a label or filter to make sure it goes into your inbox. Here are instructions on how to do this.
View Entries within WordPress
If you are concerned that you missed something you can go into your WordPress to view all form entries. Go to the Formidable menu item in WordPress >> Select a Form >> Then go to the Entries tab.