Your website sends a lot of email on its own: password resets, order receipts, form notifications, welcome emails, course access, newsletters. When one of those doesn’t arrive, it usually feels like something is broken. Most of the time, it isn’t. Here’s how it all works.
How Your Site Sends Email
WordPress on its own is pretty bad at sending email. So every Concierge site sends its email through Postmark, a professional email delivery service, connected to your site with a plugin called FluentSMTP. I set this up for you, along with the special DNS records (called SPF, DKIM and DMARC) that prove to Gmail, Outlook and everyone else that your site is allowed to send email from your domain.
Your plan includes a monthly allowance of site email: 250 on Essentials, 2,000 on Core, 25,000 on Pro and 100,000 on Platinum. Beyond that, it’s $15 per additional 10,000 emails… or you can use your own sending account and send as much as you like.
The Most Common Reasons An Email “Didn’t Arrive”
- It’s in the spam or promotions folder. Always check there first. Some business email systems also have a quarantine area that holds suspicious messages without telling anyone.
- The address bounced before. If an address once bounced hard (it didn’t exist, or the mailbox was full for too long) or the person marked one of your emails as spam, Postmark stops sending to it to protect your reputation. Your site will show the email as “failed”. The address can be reactivated if the problem is fixed… just ask me.
- There’s a typo in the address. More common than you’d think. Especially on checkout forms.
- The recipient’s company filters email strictly. Some corporate and school email systems hold or delay outside mail.
- The “From” address isn’t set up properly. Your site should send from an address on your own domain (like hello [at] yourdomain.com). Sending as a Gmail or Yahoo address from your website almost guarantees spam folders. Plugins like WooCommerce, MemberPress and Fluent Forms each have their own “From” setting, so a stray one can slip through.
Replies To Site Email
Many site emails come from a “noreply” address. Anyone who replies to those won’t reach you. If you’d like replies to go somewhere real, tell me which address and I’ll set the “Reply-To” accordingly.
Newsletters And Campaigns
If you send newsletters from your site (with FluentCRM, for example), those go through a separate “broadcast” lane at Postmark, so marketing email never hurts the delivery of your receipts and password resets. A few tips:
- Send campaigns from the address I set up for them. If you’re not sure which one that is, ask before you send.
- Unsubscribes and bounces are handled for you. People who unsubscribe or bounce are automatically left out of future sends. Please don’t re-import them.
- Editing an automation doesn’t change emails already in progress. If people are partway through a sequence, they continue on the version they started.
What To Send Me
If an email didn’t arrive, post in Basecamp with:
- Which email it was (receipt, password reset, form notification, a campaign…)
- The recipient’s address
- Roughly when it should have gone out
With that, I can look up exactly what happened to that message in Postmark. Usually within a few minutes I can tell you whether it was delivered, bounced, or blocked… and why.