Email form doesn’t work

Hi brains99,

I’m sorry to hear you’re seeing issues with this, but I believe I can help!

First, your notification setup looks 100% good to go, so we can rule that out as an issue. This means that the best next step is to install an SMTP plugin.

Here’s what’s happening: you’re emails are being sent just fine, but email providers are either flagging those emails as spam or preventing them from being delivered at all. This is unfortunately becoming more common, and is a side effect of efforts by email providers to combat and filter out growing amounts of actual spam.

An SMTP will authenticate your emails so that email providers understand them to be legitimate and allow them to be delivered.

We’ve compiled a list of all of our recommended SMTP options in this tutorial — and we’ve shared individual tutorials for each, as well.

I hope that helps! When you’ve had a chance to start setting up one of these SMTP options, could you please let me know if you have any questions?

Thanks! ??

Thanks but.. nope. Setup the SMTP plugin exactly as it states. Also turned on less secure apps in gmail.

Still doesn’t work.

What else you got?

Thanks.

Hi brains99,

Thanks for setting that up, and the next step is to check the debug log. To view this, you’ll need to go to the SMTP settings page and send a test email (the debug log should appear automatically).

When you have a chance to do that, could you please share that here? Either a screenshot or a straight copy paste would be fine. If you’d also be willing to share a screenshot or two of your SMTP settings, that would be helpful as well (feel free to blur out any emails or passwords, or just leave the password field out of the screenshot).

This will give me more details to better determine why this isn’t working just yet.

Thanks!

Screenshot of my SMTP settings:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/syon79oh5w94la3/Screen%20Shot%202017-12-05%20at%201.49.47%20PM.jpg?dl=0

Text from debug:

Test Message Sent

The result was:

bool(false)
The full debugging output is shown below:

PHPMailer Object
(
[Version] => 5.2.22
[Priority] =>
[CharSet] => UTF-8
[ContentType] => text/plain
[Encoding] => 7bit
[ErrorInfo] => SMTP Error: Could not authenticate.
[From] => [email protected]
[FromName] => Edge Cinema
[Sender] =>
[ReturnPath] =>
[Subject] => WP Mail SMTP: Test mail to [email protected]
[Body] => This is a test email generated by the WP Mail SMTP WordPress plugin.
[AltBody] =>
[Ical] =>
[MIMEBody:protected] => This is a test email generated by the WP Mail SMTP WordPress plugin.

[MIMEHeader:protected] => Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2017 19:48:30 +0000
To: [email protected]
From: Edge Cinema
Subject: WP Mail SMTP: Test mail to [email protected]
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
X-Mailer: PHPMailer 5.2.22 (https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

[mailHeader:protected] =>
[WordWrap] => 0
[Mailer] => smtp
[Sendmail] => /usr/sbin/sendmail
[UseSendmailOptions] => 1
[PluginDir] =>
[ConfirmReadingTo] =>
[Hostname] =>
[MessageID] =>
[MessageDate] => Tue, 5 Dec 2017 19:48:30 +0000
[Host] => smtp.gmail.com
[Port] => 465
[Helo] =>
[SMTPSecure] => ssl
[SMTPAutoTLS] => 1
[SMTPAuth] => 1
[SMTPOptions] => Array
(
)

[Username] => [email protected]
[Password] => orsonwelles50
[AuthType] =>
[Realm] =>
[Workstation] =>
[Timeout] => 300
[SMTPDebug] => 0
[Debugoutput] => echo
[SMTPKeepAlive] =>
[SingleTo] =>
[SingleToArray] => Array
(
)

[do_verp] =>
[AllowEmpty] =>
[LE] =>

[DKIM_selector] =>
[DKIM_identity] =>
[DKIM_passphrase] =>
[DKIM_domain] =>
[DKIM_private] =>
[DKIM_private_string] =>
[action_function] =>
[XMailer] =>
[smtp:protected] => SMTP Object
(
[Version] => 5.2.22
[SMTP_PORT] => 25
[CRLF] =>

[do_debug] => 0
[Debugoutput] => echo
[do_verp] =>
[Timeout] => 300
[Timelimit] => 300
[smtp_transaction_id_patterns:protected] => Array
(
[exim] => /[0-9]{3} OK id=(.*)/
[sendmail] => /[0-9]{3} 2.0.0 (.*) Message/
[postfix] => /[0-9]{3} 2.0.0 Ok: queued as (.*)/
)

[smtp_conn:protected] =>
[error:protected] => Array
(
[error] =>
[detail] =>
[smtp_code] =>
[smtp_code_ex] =>
)

[helo_rply:protected] =>
[server_caps:protected] =>
[last_reply:protected] => 221 2.0.0 closing connection 133sm366153oid.35 – gsmtp

)

[to:protected] => Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[0] => [email protected]
[1] =>
)

)

[cc:protected] => Array
(
)

[bcc:protected] => Array
(
)

[ReplyTo:protected] => Array
(
)

[all_recipients:protected] => Array
(
[[email protected]] => 1
)

[RecipientsQueue:protected] => Array
(
)

[ReplyToQueue:protected] => Array
(
)

[attachment:protected] => Array
(
)

[CustomHeader:protected] => Array
(
)

[lastMessageID:protected] => <[email protected]>
[message_type:protected] => plain
[boundary:protected] => Array
(
[1] => b1_3893fe02632c7262382e940ad2c6673d
[2] => b2_3893fe02632c7262382e940ad2c6673d
[3] => b3_3893fe02632c7262382e940ad2c6673d
)

[language:protected] => Array
(
[authenticate] => SMTP Error: Could not authenticate.
[connect_host] => SMTP Error: Could not connect to SMTP host.
[data_not_accepted] => SMTP Error: data not accepted.
[empty_message] => Message body empty
[encoding] => Unknown encoding:
[execute] => Could not execute:
[file_access] => Could not access file:
[file_open] => File Error: Could not open file:
[from_failed] => The following From address failed:
[instantiate] => Could not instantiate mail function.
[invalid_address] => Invalid address:
[mailer_not_supported] => mailer is not supported.
[provide_address] => You must provide at least one recipient email address.
[recipients_failed] => SMTP Error: The following recipients failed:
[signing] => Signing Error:
[smtp_connect_failed] => SMTP connect() failed.
[smtp_error] => SMTP server error:
[variable_set] => Cannot set or reset variable:
[extension_missing] => Extension missing:
)

[error_count:protected] => 2
[sign_cert_file:protected] =>
[sign_key_file:protected] =>
[sign_extracerts_file:protected] =>
[sign_key_pass:protected] =>
[exceptions:protected] => 1
[uniqueid:protected] => 3893fe02632c7262382e940ad2c6673d
)
The SMTP debugging output is shown below:

See below

• This reply was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by brains99.

Any chance I can get a response? Thanks!

Hi brains99,

Thanks for passing those details along! Your settings look great, so I believe the issue stems back to your host’s server settings.

Most often when we see the errors about authentication(`[authenticate] => SMTP Error: Could not authenticate.
[connect_host] => SMTP Error: Could not connect to SMTP host.`), but the email and password are correct, it’s because the SMTP couldn’t access the port it needs. Some hosts will do this by default, but generally it’s a quick fix.

When you’ve had a chance to contact your site’s hosting provider and see if they can make sure Port 465 is open for your site, could you let me know if that does the trick?

Thanks!

Hello

I can only join brains99. I think WP Forms looks good out, but I do not get any mails on testing. I have also tried another plugin. That seems. But not WP Forms, and I’d rather use it. Why. Should it not just run?

Hi hansvjensen,

If you’d like to troubleshoot further, could you please try the additional checks I mentioned to brains99 above?

I also want to mention that our team just released an update to WP Mail SMTP moments ago. So now we provide a few options that can bypass port-related issues, in addition to being much more secure. You can find all the details on that in this tutorial.

If you give either of these a shot and have any questions, please let me know!

My host/server has verified that my domain has port 465 open. The email form still won’t send email.

This is fun, aye? How can this be so difficult?

What next?

Hi brains99,

I’m sorry again for the trouble, and thanks for your patience. Unfortunately email delivery can have a few different barriers, depending on the site and email provider, but luckily we do have another option.

Just today, we released an update to WP Mail SMTP. This is a big update, and provides an option that bypasses Gmail security issues (given everything we’ve discussed, the last and most likely issue is that Gmail itself is preventing your site from using it for SMTP).

To get around this, we now provide the option to use Google’s API. This is a more secure method, and works within Google’s structure so that their security layers don’t block it.

After updating WP Mail SMTP, here’s our tutorial on getting this new Gmail SMTP option set up. I apologize for additional steps, but ultimately this will hopefully be a less frustrating option.

Thanks again for sticking with me on this, and when you’ve had a chance to give this a try please let me know how it goes!

How do I “update” WP Mail SMTP?

Hi brains99,

The update should appear in your WordPress admin under Dashboard > Updates — however, some hosts will delay the visibility of updates.

If you don’t see an update available yet, you can manually install it. There are two ways you could do this:

1) If you don’t mind your current settings being deleted: Delete WP Mail SMTP and re-install it through the WordPress repo (the most updated version is available on the WP Mail SMTP repo page).

2) If you want your current settings to stay in place: Manually update via FTP. Here’s WPBeginner’s tutorial on how to do that.

Since you’d need new settings to use this new Gmail option, either option will do what you need — it’s just a matter of whether you’d like your current settings to also stay in place/what you’re more comfortable with.

I hope that helps!

Just went through all of this. Now this is what happened at the very end..

https://www.dropbox.com/s/aamkkxfkbv66m3i/Screen%20Shot%202017-12-12%20at%203.24.32%20PM.jpg?dl=0

Now what?

There is no Dahsboard > Updates. What are you referring to?