WordPress form emails going to spam: why, and how to fix it
Why WordPress contact form emails land in spam or vanish, how to check, and how to fix it with SMTP, the right From address and SPF, DKIM and DMARC.
- Updated
- Reading time
- 2 min
Short answer
WordPress form emails go to spam because, out of the box, WordPress sends them from your web server, which nothing proves is allowed to send email for your domain. Fix it by sending through an SMTP plugin and a proper mail service, using a From address on your own domain, and adding SPF, DKIM and DMARC records.
Key takeaways
- Most lost form emails are sent fine by WordPress and then filtered as spam on the way in.
- Putting the visitor's address in the From line makes your email look forged. Use your own domain and put the visitor in Reply-To.
- Keep a copy of every enquiry on the site, and get told another way too, so one lost email doesn't cost you a job.
Why it happens
Out of the box, WordPress hands email to the web server it runs on. That server isn't a mail server anyone trusts. Nothing proves the email really comes from your domain, so Gmail, Outlook and the rest treat it as suspicious: into spam, or dropped without a word.
It gets worse when the form puts the visitor's address in the From line. Your site is then sending email that claims to be from someone's Gmail account, which is exactly what a forged email looks like.
Shared hosting adds to it. You share a sending address with hundreds of other sites, and if one of them sends spam, everyone's email suffers.
Check what is happening
Before changing anything, find out where the email goes.
Submit your own form, then look in the spam folder of the address it sends to.
Install a mail log plugin, such as WP Mail Logging, and submit again. If the email is in the log, WordPress sent it and it was lost afterwards. If it isn't, the form never sent it.
Check the form's settings: is the "send to" address right, and still in use?
Fix the email
Three changes fix most sites. Do them in this order.
Send through a proper mail service. An SMTP plugin, such as WP Mail SMTP or FluentSMTP, passes your site's email to a service built for it: your own mailbox provider, or a sending service such as Mailgun, Postmark or Brevo.
Send from your own domain. Set the From address to something like [email protected], and put the visitor's address in Reply-To, so pressing Reply still goes to them.
Prove the email is yours. Add the SPF and DKIM records your mail service gives you to your domain's DNS, and a DMARC record. These are what receiving mail servers check.
Don't rely on email alone
Even a well set-up site loses an email now and then: a full mailbox, a changed password, a filter someone added. An enquiry is worth too much to have one copy.
Keep a copy on the site. Most form plugins store entries. Contact Form 7 needs the Flamingo add-on, and WPForms Lite keeps none.
And get told another way. That is what Formcrier is for: it sends each enquiry to your phone on WhatsApp, a text, Telegram, Slack or Teams within seconds, and keeps a copy in your dashboard. With Contact Form 7 it still alerts you when the site's own email fails to send.
It's free for 10 alerts a month, and the WordPress plugin takes about five minutes to set up.
Tim builds websites for UK service businesses and made Formcrier after clients kept missing enquiries sent by email.