Wordfence and WP SMTP Mail not working

Hi @nouwsh, thanks for your question and sorry to see you’re having this trouble.

Wordfence uses the same mail functions that are built into WordPress, so there is no technical difference between the way Wordfence and WordPress behave in sending those out. My instinct would therefore be that you’re experiencing a false-positive block on the email send functions somewhere once Wordfence is active.

From the Wordfence Dashboard click on Manage WAF. Then you will see Basic Firewall Options > Web Application Firewall Status. Change the option to Learning Mode. Now try sending test emails again, and performing any other email functions that you can. This will help Wordfence learn that these actions are normal and it will allow them in the future. After you have finished performing the actions, switch the WAF from Learning Mode back to Enabled and Protecting. Now test to see if these actions work correctly.

https://www.wordfence.com/help/firewall/learning-mode/ is an amazing resource for learning more about the WAF and learning mode.

Let me know how you get on.

Thanks,

Peter.

Hey Peter,

Yes I’ve tried to leave it in learning mode. Still couldn’t send out emails.
The only way to send emails is to deactivate the plugin. Any other idea? Is there a way to manually prevent it from blocking the email?

Regards,
Fred.

Hi @nouwsh, thanks for trying that out for me.

I would recommend you check the site’s PHP error logs at the times the emails should be sending. Since we don’t have any functionality that would actively block the sending of an email, an error of some sort must be occurring when the send is attempted. If you can provide any copy/pasted information about what you find, that would assist us in getting to the bottom of this for you.

So that I can better understand your server configuration and installed plugins, can you also send a diagnostic report to wftest @ wordfence . com? You can find the link to do so at the top of the Wordfence Tools > Diagnostics page. Then click on “Send Report by Email”. Please add your forum username where indicated and respond here after you have sent it.

Note: For the fastest response time, please make sure and add any information or questions directly to this topic and not the email address above unless asked.

Thanks,

Peter.

@wfpeter thanks for your reply.

I would gladly send you the report by email but the problem is, I can’t send emails through wordpress when I activate the wordfence. So when I try to send the report it just gives timeout.

I’ve tried to check PHP info debug while sending with wordfence active and also sending with wordfence disabled. I can’t seem to find the problem, but I’m not an expert in debugging in wordpress so… Sorry =\

The main reason I see is that when I activate Wordfence, my WP SMTP plugin starts to warn that it can’t authenticate my smtp. Seems like Wordfence disables the smtp authentication with the server in some way. I’m hosting in shared hosts of fastcomet, that’s where my mailserver is (I use their webmail server). And my smtp authenticates with uk2.fcomet.com (their UK server). So does this help to find why wordfence would stop this authentication process?

P.S. (info added on edit): I authenticate via SSL on port 465.

Regards.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by nouwsh.

Hi @nouwsh, my apologies for not including further instructions originally.

The diagnostic can be exported on the same page to a .txt file, which can then be manually emailed to wftest @ wordfence . com. Please include your forum username in the new subject so that I can easily find it. Drop me another reply when you’re done.

We sometimes see issues where the automated emails sent through cron jobs are the main issue whereas manually activated mail sends that Wordfence sees as an admin action continue to function, so I made the assumption a manual mail send for the diagnostic would work – clearly it doesn’t and I’ll try to see if we can get this fixed once I understand a little more about the configuration on your site.

Thanks again,

Peter.

@wfpeter Ok I’ve sent it. Thanks.

Hi @nouwsh, thanks for doing that.

I can’t see any fundamental problems in communications, SMTP modules or other failures. I notice the following content:

## Log Files: PHP error logs generated by your site, if enabled by your host. ##

---------------------------------------------------------------
| File                                                        |
---------------------------------------------------------------
| ~/error_log (5.67 KB, Feb 16, 2021 15:18:53 UTC)            |
| ~/wp-admin/error_log (388.83 KB, Feb 17, 2021 15:22:01 UTC) |
| error_log (388.83 KB, Feb 17, 2021 15:22:01 UTC)            |
---------------------------------------------------------------

I feel that one or all of these error_log files will contain logs of SMTP failures which may point to a detailed description of what’s happening behind the scenes. You could try downloading them from your hosting file manager or FTP client and forwarding them to the same email as your diagnostic (again, with your username in the subject) and I will help interpret them for you.

Thanks again,

Peter.

I have a similar but not identical problem. I have installed Wordfence on 2 sites. I had configured Gmail to automatically retrieve mail from the domains and allow me to send using an alias. Since installing Wordfence, these services have stopped working and I can not send or receive through Gmail. On one of the sites I use sendgrid to forward formail, this still works fine. The other site does not use sendgrid but formmail also fine. Any ideas why Wordfence interferes with the webmail smtp?

Nicko