The form says sent. Nothing arrives.
Every enquiry that doesn't reach you is a customer who thinks you ignored them. In most cases the form is fine and the site simply can't send email — which is fixable in an afternoon, once you know which of the six causes it is.
- !The form shows a success message and no email ever arrives
- !Some messages come through, others vanish with no pattern
- !Enquiries land in spam — yours, or the customer's
- !It stopped after a hosting move, a plugin update or a domain change
- !The customer's copy arrives but yours doesn't (or the other way round)
- !A customer says they wrote weeks ago and you never saw it
- 01The site sends unauthenticated mail through PHP, and receivers reject it
- 02The host blocks or rate-limits outgoing mail from the web server
- 03No SPF or DKIM record for the domain, so the mail fails authentication
- 04The From address uses a domain the server isn't allowed to send for
- 05A security or anti-spam plugin silently discarding submissions
- 06The notification address is wrong, or forwarding to a mailbox nobody opens
Check these three things first. If one of them is it, you don't need me.
Two of the six causes are genuinely fixable in five minutes without a developer. It's worth ruling them out before paying anyone — including me.
- 1Open the form settings and look at the notification address. A typo there, or an old employee's mailbox, accounts for more 'broken' forms than any technical fault.
- 2Check the From address the form uses. If it's your Gmail or Outlook address rather than one on your own domain, change it to something like noreply@yourdomain.com and send a test — that alone fixes a good share of cases.
- 3Search your spam folder for a test submission you send yourself. If it's sitting there, the form works and the problem is deliverability, which is worth telling me up front.
Still nothing after all three? Then it's one of the other four, and those need server-side work.
A repeatable procedure, not guesswork.
- 01
Confirm what's actually happening
I submit the form and follow the message: does WordPress try to send at all, does the server accept it, does the recipient. Three different failures that look identical from the outside.
- 02
Full backup
Files and database before changing any mail or plugin configuration.
- 03
Authenticated SMTP
I route mail through a proper authenticated sender instead of the web server, using your existing mailbox or a dedicated sending service.
- 04
SPF and DKIM
DNS records so receiving servers can verify the mail really comes from your domain. This is what stops the intermittent delivery.
- 05
Delivery proof
Test submissions delivered to Gmail, Outlook and your own inbox, plus a mail log switched on inside WordPress so you can see future sends.
- 06
Written report
Which of the causes it was, what I changed, and what to re-check if it ever goes quiet again.
How much can it cost?
Indicative range. Final estimate after seeing the site.
Authenticated SMTP configured, DNS records added, delivery tested across providers, logging enabled. Covers most sites.
Intermittent delivery, a security plugin discarding entries, or a host with restrictions that need working around.
Several domains, or a WooCommerce shop where order emails fail too — same root cause, more surface to verify.
The questions I always get.
01The form shows a success message. How can nothing be arriving?
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Because the success message only means the browser reached WordPress — not that an email left the server. WordPress hands the message to PHP's mail function, and from there it can be blocked by the host, rejected by the receiving server, or silently binned as spam. The green tick tells you almost nothing.
02Some emails arrive and some don't. Is that a different problem?
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Usually it's the same one, seen from further along. Unauthenticated mail sent straight from a web server sits in a grey zone: some providers accept it, Gmail and Microsoft increasingly don't. Intermittent delivery is the classic signature of a missing SPF/DKIM setup.
03Which form plugins do you work with?
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Contact Form 7, WPForms, Gravity Forms, Fluent Forms, Elementor Forms and the block-based ones. The plugin matters far less than people expect: in most cases the fault is in how the site sends mail, not in the form itself.
04How do I know it's actually fixed, and not just quiet again?
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Because I leave you proof: test submissions delivered to Gmail, Outlook and your own inbox, a mail log switched on inside WordPress, and a note of what to re-check if it ever stops again. Not 'it works on my machine'.