Endless Emails

How is this plugin sending emails?! We cannot find the cron or the action_schedule.

Are you using any SMTP plugins? Deactivating the plugin should have stopped all emails from sending so I guess this was an issue with WordPress or the plugin you use to send emails.

We use the ‘noptin_noptin_bg_mailer_cron’ hook. Try searching for that, either in your corn schedules.

Yes, we use WP SMTP plugin and send mails via Sendgrid.

Issue was supposedly with W3TC plugin or transients – it is unclear.

What I tried to solve the issue?
1. Deleted the campaign directly. Didn’t work.
2. Deleted noptin options from database. Didn’t work.
3. Deactivated plugins (free or pro) for 24hrs. Didn’t work.
4. Restarted services on my server – Redis, Nginx etc. Didn’t work.
5. Checked for Cron in Wp_Cron, Action Scheduler. Found nothing related to noptin.
6. Decreased sending capacity in the plugin to 0 mails per hour. Didn’t work.
7. Tried to find and delete the email data from wp_posts or postmeta table – nothing there.

Finally, I digged into the code – because my Spam Score was going off the charts and nothing was stopping the emails – not even deletion of plugins.

wp-content/plugins/newsletter-optin-box/includes/class-noptin-mailer.php
Commented line 59.

Please let me know if this is correct or else I will dig further.

It is a nightmare frankly. May I know how is this plugin sending mails without cron?!

I said W3TC or Transients because I took the extreme steps to disable Object Caching and Clear transients to stop this email. I am not sure if that worked, because it was only 30 mins back I have had no spam reports.

I cannot believe the fact, we still have this plugin sending emails.

There is no hook: noptin_noptin_bg_mailer_cron

Guys, please tell me how to stop this email.
I have tried everything and it is still going on and on since 3 days.

Do send us a copy of the email to support [at] noptin.com and we’ll see how to go on with it. But I really doubt it is related to Noptin since you claim that you deactivated Noptin, and can’t see any cron jobs related to Noptin.

In addition, send us a screenshot of the campaign overview page in Noptin. Does it show that it is sending, or is it marked as complete?

If it is sending, have you tried to pause it? There should be a button to pause the sending process.

Was it a normal newsletter campaign or is it a new post notification campaign?

It was an Automated Email to WC customers based on their purchase patterns. The campaign showed Pause button when it was running, however in 24hrs it showed the status complete (or done).

In spite of that, it was sending emails. So we did not have the option to “pause”.
Hence, to fix this issue, we deleted the campaign. Assuming there would be glitch in the coding, deletion seemed sensible.

Anyway, like mentioned we tried many things. Ultimately what worked was clearing the mail queue.
Issue was self fixed, however we would not be using the mailer again for sure.

Maybe you can find and fix the issue that much have caused this. Because without CRON or Action Scheduler job – to queue so many mails and most of them repeats is a bug for sure.

Regards;

Thanks for letting us know where to start from. We’re looking into this and will let you know as soon as we fix the bug.

Sorry for the inconvenience caused.

Does it ring a bell?

I mean it was very odd solution to clear all the mails in queue in postfix. That cannot be the solution if plugin is deactivated or deleted.

Is the plugin queuing mails like that? Beyond the WordPress activation?