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Email sending issues are usually not directly related to our membership plugin. If the plugin sent the email but the recipient didn’t get it, then that means the email got blocked somewhere (or it went to the spambox).
In this post I will explain how you can determine if the plugin sent the email or not so you can troubleshoot the issue on your end.
How to verify if the plugin sent the email or not
Step 1) Go to the settings menu of the Simple Membership plguin.
Step 2) Enable the debug option by checking the “Enable Debug” field. Then save the settings.
Step 3) Do a test membership signup and check the log file data.If you see entries like the following then that means the plugin successfully sent the email:
Member signup/upgrade completion email successfully sent to: john.xx@yahoo.comWhat Can I do to Fix the Email Issue?
If the plugin is sending the email but the recipient is not getting it then that means the email that is sent from your server is getting blocked (or being marked as spam). You need to fix that so the emails sent by the plugin doesn’t get blocked.
Try doing the following:
Step 1) Make sure you are using an email address that uses your domain name as your “From Email Address” field value. Some servers won’t deliver the email if you don’t send it from an address that uses your domain name.
Example: Lets say you can use the following two addresses as your “From Email Address” field value (the 1st one is an email address on your domain, the 2nd one is your gmail address):
1. ABC Company <jedi@abc-company.com>
2. ABC Company <jedi@gmail.com>You should use the 1st example in your plugin settings.
If you are using the 2nd example as your from email address value then there is a good chance that this email will be blocked (or get marked as spam).
Step 2) Some servers only allow emails with SMTP configuration. You can get a WordPress plugin to configure SMTP for your WordPress install. You can use the following SMTP plugin:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/easy-wp-smtp/
Once you configure SMTP, all the emails that gets sent out by WordPress will use this configuration. This will result in a high deliverability of your emails.
Make sure to test the email sending functionality from this plugin. Then use those exact configuration (that works) in the plugin’s email settings.
The original post from @admin is excellent. Unfortunately, there are always more hoops being added into the mix if you want to send mail from your server. You have to worry about things like reverse DNS, SPX records, authorized MX records for your domain, etc. Sometimes your hosting platform restricts your ability to send SMTP directly from your server. Sometimes your server/droplet/ec2 instance/whatever doesn’t come with an SMTP service installed–leaving you to install and configure an SMTP service.
I’m going to share the secret I’ve discovered that has eliminated all my mail sending challenges.
First, like @admin shared, install an SMTP sending plugin. He suggested easy-wp-smtp:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/easy-wp-smtp/I’m sure any SMTP plugin will do.
This adds SMTP options to the WordPress Settings menu item.
And here is the secret sauce. Simply use the Mailgun service from Rackspace as your SMTP server. It is free to create an account and free to send mail up to 10,000 messages per month. Most folks are going to fall WAY under that limit. If you need to send more than 10,000 messages per month, well maybe it’s worthwhile to pony up the low fees.
Mailgun’s SMTP is extremely fast, reliable, and the best part, you can log into your Mailgun Dashboard and look at your sending logs. If there is a problem sending the message, it’s right there in the log. You can look at stats that show you how many messages have failed, etc.
You do need to follow the Mailgun instructions very closely to configure your DNS to allow Mailgun mail servers to have authority to send mail on your behalf. The instructions they provide are very clear. In fact, if you want to use your own SMTP, these instructions might help you understand the bits you need to configure to get your own mail sending working.
I use Mailgun SMTP for all my WordPress and phpBB systems. If you are a developer, you can actually send mail using the Mailgun API instead of standard SMTP. It’s lightning fast and you get feedback on the success of your sending.
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