Emails won't Send Unless use my Email

I support about 12 websites and the only workaround I’ve ever come across is to enter the recipient’s email address in the From field and include the sender’s email in the message body.

It’s a terrible solution – the user can’t just reply to the email.

I’ve only encountered this problem with yahoo email addresses.

Also – when the recipient’s email is a gmail account gmail indicates that the email sent via Contact 7 may be a phishing attempt. I don’t want my clients seeing that either!

I hope someone provides a better workaround!

Hmm. That seems a bit odd. I don’t see what the point of the contact form is if it doesn’t contact. Thanks for the tip! I might just have to try that, but thanks for the info.

Some hosting requires that any emails being sent via WordPress are from a valid email address on your local domain.

See Contact Form 7 Email Issues. There is a link at the bottom of the page to a comprehensive and detailed article which covers many issues. Most people that work through this information appear to be able to resolve their email sending & receiving issues.

See also Best Practice to Set Up Mail.??

See https://kb.cf7skins.com/yahoo-dmarc-issue/ for Yahoo email addresses.

Update: I just tried two gmail emails and they worked, then I tried a yahoo and an aol and nothing happened.

Please try it by sending me an email and I will let you know if it passes through:

https://rapforthemoment.com/contact

@rapforthemoment, @pentechcoach

If you don’t use your own address in the From: field then you are forging email and most likely losing contact messages. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_spoofing.

@pentechcoach It’s a guarantee you’ll lose the email if you use your visitor’s address in the From: field, and your visitor’s address has an SPF record set to ‘reject’. SPF was designed specifically to prevent that.

And when you do use your own email address, you also have to use the right SMTP server, or again, an SPF violation, esp. for Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail. You’ll likely need an SMTP plugin to deliver email.

If you’re using a custom domain, then you have to create the SPF record yourself.

How can I fix this? Clearly, I want it so that users can input their very own email so that I may contact them further regarding the matter they come to me with.

Simple enough, add the following in the Additional Headers field:

Reply-To: [your-name] <[your-email]>

Hope that helps!

This is my form. Does everything seem to appear right?

——————————————–

To: [email protected]

From: [your-name] <[your-email]>

Subject: [your-subject]

Additional headers:

Sender: [email protected]
Reply-To: [your-name] <[your-email]>

———————————————

No. You can’t use your visitor’s email as your “From:” Change it to:

From: [your-name] <[email protected]>

Here’s why. [email protected] fills out your form. WordPress sends your email via smtp.gmail.com. Gmail examines your From domain (yahoo.com), verifies that you violated Yahoo’s SPF policy, and tosses your email.

This goes hand-in-hand with using the right SMTP server. Install an SMTP plugin if you’re not using one.

It worked! Not sure why my Contact Form changed to that previous format, but your info fixed it! Got an email from a Yahoo. Works perfect. Thank you so much Postman! ??

My pleasure ??

https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/postman-smtp/

Hi,

I’m having a similar problem. My situation is that a user will submit on this form and then get a confirmation auto reply from the appropriate email on our end. However we don’t get the user’s message..

Added the reply fields as additional headers but no change. Ideas?

Thank you

@unitecoop, make sure you 1. use your own email address in the from field and 2. use the correct SMTP server for your email address. If it still doesn’t work from there we can debug further, but those are minimum requirements for most setups.

Hi,

Thanks a lot for helping me out. I had already put my email address in the from field. Not sure how to check in the form set-up re: smtp server.

The SMTP server setup is done with another plugin, such as Postman or any of these others. You need to speak with your email provider to find out what SMTP server you are supposed to you and how to authenticate to it (name + password).

K, installed your plugin and test email and it seems to work. What’s next?

That should be it. Are you still not receiving your contact form messages?