Email notifications not being recieved

@mccawphoto

If the emails are showing in the log then there must be some issue in the pass over to the Exchange server, or some difference in configuration on the live server compared to the development server.

I have integrated SendGrid to help with the limit our host has on the hosting account but noticed that when I posted a new post only 1579 emails were sent to SendGrid to deliver. Is there a limit on how many subscribers there can be? Any idea why only 1579 of 3877 emails were sent when I posted a new post?

Thanks!

@mccawphoto

Are your subscribers a mix of Registered and Public? Are all of your Registered Subscribers subscribed to the category (categories) that the new post was assigned to?

All but 2 of the subscribers are Registered. I assume all Registered users are subscribed to all categories but I haven’t checked. I don’t really want to manually check each of the 3875 subscribers to see if they are subscribed to all categories. Is there a way to check that in bulk?

None of the subscribers have a password so they can’t change their subscription. This is a site we moved over from Drupal so I added them manually by uploading csv files of 500 users at a time. When you add them in that way does it automatically subscribe them to all categories? Or do you think they aren’t subscribed to all categories?

Thanks!

@mccawphoto

When importing users the set up of subscriptions depends on the Auto-Subscribe settings in Subscribe2 and the way the import process works – some plugins don’t fire the correct user creation hooks in WordPress.

To see quickly the level of subscriptions go to Subscribe2->Subscribers and then the Registered Subscribers tab. There is a drop down filter and next to all of your sites category names there will be a count of how many of your Registered Subscribers are subscribed to that category.

If you wish you can bulk subscribe all of your Registered Subscribers to specified categories using the Bulk Management section at the bottom of that same page.

I just checked and it shows all Registered subscribers in all categories. Any other ideas?

Thanks!

Could that amount of subscribers cause the Subscribe2 plugin to timeout and cause only 1573 emails to be sent to SendGrid?

Thanks!

@mccawphoto

It may well be that PHP is timing out on the server, Subscribe2 and WordPress are both PHP scripts so the timeouts are in the php.ini settings.

I put max_execution_time = 900 in the php.ini file and posted another post but only 1422 of the 3877 subscribers were sent email notifications. Are there any other settings I need to change related to this? Can you think of any other reasons why it doesn’t send all 3877 subscribers an email when there is a new post?

Thanks!

@mccawphoto

Maybe the connection to SendGrid is timing out. Is there a way for you to check that?

I am not sure how to check that. I have looked at the site error_log in the root directory and don’t see anything. I can try calling SendGrid to see if they have a way. Any ideas how to do this other than that?

One other question would it be helpful to use some plugin to only send a certain number of emails to SendGrid every hour? Is it possible that it is hitting some sort of limit on how many it can send to SendGrid at once and then just errorring out?

I am running out of ideas and the frustrating thing is I can only test this when the client makes a new post because I don’t want to deluge their users with test emails.

I really appreciate your help on this!
Thanks!

@mccawphoto

Staging email being over to SendGrid is absolutely worth a try – your own hosting provider should have access to logs that may confirm a connection timeout but if queueing the emails locally to send to SendGrid in blocks works then you’ll know that was the issue anyway.

We switched hosting to a VPS server and that fixed the issue of having only 1400 emails sent to SendGrid. I now have another issue though. When I publish a post it errors out and I get this error:

“Connection lost. Saving has been disabled until you’re reconnected. We’re backing up this post in your browser, just in case.”

The post does publish, but my dashboard forever spins and does nothing. After a few minutes I am finally able to access my dashboard and I see that the post is published, the emails send out as well.

It seems like the task of sending all of the emails to sendgrid is causing the issue. When I disable the Subscribe2 plugin so no emails are sent and publish a post it publishes just fine.

I really like SendGrid because it shows stats like opens and clicks, etc. but unfortunately it doesn’t play nice with the WPMQ mail throttling plugin as we discovered already. Seems like I need to somehow tell Subscribe2 only to send out so many emails at a time.

I suppose one option is to not use sendgrid at all but my client really likes SendGrid.

Do you think that is the issue as well?

Do you know of a way to solve the Connection lost error and still use SendGrid and Subscribe2?

Thanks!

@mccawphoto

This sounds like a connectivity issue between your server and SendGrid to me still. Perhaps try with WPMQ and Subscribe2 (but not SendGrid) or ask over on the SendGrid support forum for advice:

https://www.ads-software.com/support/plugin/sendgrid-email-delivery-simplified

I am going to try just using Subscribe2 and WPMQ but I realized that without SendGrid I don’t have an unsubscribe link in the email notifications. I want to get that in place first before I send out my next post.

I did some research and found that I needed to create a page, place a subscribe2 form on that page and then in the email notification add an unsubscribe link that links to the page I created. I did that but when I enter my email address and click unsubscribe I am told I need to login and take care of it via my profile. I want users to be able to just enter the email address and click unsubscribe. Is this possible?

Is there any reason why this wouldn’t work this way?

Thanks!