Gravity Forms notifications not working: a step-by-step fix

Where do you start when Gravity Forms notifications don't arrive?

Start with the entry itself, because Gravity Forms stores every submission and notes what happened to its notifications. Submit the form yourself, then go to Forms → Entries, open your entry and scroll down to the Notes section.

Since version 2.4.15, Gravity Forms adds a note to each entry with the result of every notification it tried to send. From that note you can tell whether the fault is in the form's settings, in WordPress's sending, or somewhere after the email left your site. If there's no entry at all, the form didn't submit, or the spam settings threw it away; skip to the spam section.

What do the entry's notes mean?

Each note is one of a handful of results, and each points to a different fix. Gravity Forms documents these messages:

People often misread the first message. It means Gravity Forms handed the email over successfully, so changing the form's settings won't help unless the From address is wrong. Look at delivery instead.

Is the notification set up correctly?

If there's no note, the notification didn't run, so check its settings under Forms → [your form] → Form Settings → Notifications. Every form starts with one called Admin Notification, and you can add more with Add New.

Open each notification and check the Event. For an enquiry form it should be "Form is submitted". Other events, such as "Form is saved" or the payment events, only send when that thing happens.

Then check Send To, which has three options:

• Enter Email sends to fixed addresses. Separate several with commas, and look for typos and spaces, which Gravity Forms says can make a notification fail.

• Select a Field sends to an address typed into the form, which is how you email the visitor instead of yourself.

• Configure Routing sends to different addresses depending on the answers. If no rule matches, there's no recipient, and nothing is sent.

These faults stop a notification from running at all:

The notification is switched off

In Form Settings → Notifications, the toggle next to its name must be green.

The event says "(Event Missing)"

The add-on that created the event has gone. Choose a valid event, such as Form is submitted.

Routing sends nothing

No routing rule matched, so the notification had no recipient. Add a rule for every possible answer.

Conditional logic is too narrow

The notification only sends when its conditions are met. Test with answers that match, or relax the rules.

Are the From and Reply To addresses right?

The From Email should be an address on your website's own domain, and the visitor's address belongs in Reply To. Gravity Forms' documentation is firm about this: use an address your server is authorised to send from, never the visitor's.

A notification whose From Email is the visitor's address, such as [email protected], looks forged to the receiving server. SPF and DMARC checks fail, and Gravity Forms names Yahoo, AOL and Gmail among the providers that apply such policies. Set From Email to something like [email protected], or the {admin_email} merge tag if the WordPress admin address is on your domain, and set Reply To to the form's email field.

Also make sure the From and Send To addresses are different. Gravity Forms warns that many providers reject or file as spam an email sent from an address to itself.

Was the entry marked as spam?

Entries marked as spam don't send notifications, confirmations or add-on feeds, so a genuine enquiry caught by a filter never reaches your inbox. Look above the entries list for the Spam link, which shows a count when anything has been caught.

Several things can mark an entry as spam: the honeypot ("Detect Spam using the Advanced Honeypot" in Form Settings), its submission speed check, the setting for links in submissions, Akismet and reCAPTCHA. The honeypot also has a setting for what happens to spam. If it's set to "Do not create an entry", caught submissions are thrown away and won't appear anywhere, so switch it to "Create an entry and mark it as spam" while you investigate.

Marking an entry Not Spam moves it back, but its notifications still aren't sent. Use Resend Notifications for that, as below. For a wider look at the trade-offs, see how to stop contact form spam without losing real enquiries.

How do you fix the sending, then resend what you missed?

When the notes show WordPress couldn't send, or sent mail that keeps going missing, send through a proper mail service. Like most WordPress plugins, Gravity Forms hands its email to WordPress's wp_mail() function, which uses your web server unless something replaces it.

You have two routes. An SMTP plugin, such as WP Mail SMTP, FluentSMTP or Post SMTP, covers every email the site sends; our guide to setting up SMTP for WordPress contact forms explains how. Gravity Forms also sells its own Gravity SMTP plugin, and has add-ons for Mailgun, Postmark and SendGrid that send form notifications only. Either way, add the DNS records described in SPF, DKIM and DMARC in plain English.

If the notes don't explain it, turn on logging under Forms → Settings → Logging and submit again, then turn it off and delete the logs once you're done. Gravity Forms shows a warning on every admin page while logging is on.

Once sending works, send the notifications you missed:

1. 1

   Open the entries

   Go to Forms → Entries and choose the form.

2. 2

   Pick the entries

   Open one entry for the Entry Detail view, or tick several in the list and choose Resend Notifications from the bulk actions, then press Apply.

3. 3

   Choose the notifications

   Tick the notification to send again, such as Admin Notification. To send it somewhere else this time, enter an address in the override field that appears.

4. 4

   Send them

   Press Resend Notifications, then check the entry's Notes for the new sending result.

How can you stop missing the next enquiry?

Keep an eye on Forms → Entries, which holds every submission whatever happened to its email, and add a second way to hear about new ones. Email can fail again later without anyone noticing.

Formcrier is one option. It sends each Gravity Forms submission to your phone on WhatsApp, a text, Telegram, Slack or Microsoft Teams within seconds, separately from your site's email, through its WordPress plugin or a script tag. See Formcrier for Gravity Forms. It's free for 10 alerts a month.