Sending an email involves more complexity than we often realize, and various issues can result in emails not being delivered. This page aims to highlight several potential problems to investigate when emails fail to reach their intended recipients.
* * * Orlando Web Wizards have already addressed most of these issues. However, if you’d like to verify, here’s where you should look. * * *
Run a test from the Delivery Diagnostic page
The System/Delivery Diagnostic page offers a mailing test feature where you can send out emails to specified addresses using the same method used by the Newsletter plugin when delivering your newsletters.
Send tests to many email addresses on different domains/services: Gmail, Hotmail, your domain, and so on.
The Delivery Diagnostic page is under the System Dropdown menu
* * * Orlando Web Wizard utilizes Amazon Web Services Simple Email Sending and Offload SES Lite to manage SMTP issues. Consequently, there should be no SMTP problems when using our packaged services. * * *
Other checks when there are errors or emails are not delivered
If you got an error OR you got a success message but the test emails are not delivered:
- never set as sender email address something like …@gmail.com, …@yahoo.com and so on, use your own domain;
your sender address is the same as the receiver address (do not test from name@domain.com to name@domain.com many mail service providers drop those emails); - wait at least 15 minutes, some providers are slow in sending emails;
- check the spam folder: if your email is classified as spam your server is probably blacklisted (use an external SMTP service);
- you set a non-existent mailbox as the sender email address on the main Newsletter’s configuration panel or an email that isn’t in the same domain as your blog -> change that email;
- you set the reply to or the return path on the main Newsletter’s configuration panel and your server does not like that -> empty them;
- you set a sender name and your server does not like it-> use a plain one without accented characters or empty it (especially on Windows installations);
- change the mail body encoding on the main Newsletter configuration -> try all the values;
you configured an SMTP but something is not correct -> test the SMTP on its configuration panel;
Test with Mailtrap
Mailtrap is a test system that gives you a “fake” SMTP service. This service traps all the emails sent and shows them in a console. It’s a perfect way to see if a plugin is actually sending an email and then understand if the problem is in the plugin or in the system that receives it and should deliver it.
* * * Orlando Web Wizard utilizes AWS SES, which includes a suppression list. If you have your own AWS account, you can access the suppression list there. If you’re using the Orlando Web Wizard AWS SES account, simply ask us, and we’ll send it to you as either an XML or PDF attachment. This suppression list contains the same information as Mailtrap. *
The sender address I set is not respected
If newsletters are sent from a different address than the one set in your sender settings, or if you frequently change the email address, it can cause issues. Orlando Web Wizard configures the proper sending DNS with AWS SES, and the email address needs to be verified with AWS SES. Ensure the sender email address is a real mailbox and contact us for support if the problem persists. Additionally, frequently changing the sender email address can prevent it from being recognized and saved in your customers’ address books, making it unexpected.
Everyone receives emails except me
You set the sender as newsletter@mydomain.com and you try to send a newsletter to you@mydomain.com, but it does not work. The problem is who manages the mail for the domain “mydomain.com”. Probably they say: “someone [your blog] is sending emails as newsletter@mydomain.com but that is not possible since only we can send for that domain” and they drop the email.
Sometimes emails are delivered sometimes not
This is a classical “limit hit” problem. Many providers pose a limit on the maximum number of emails that can be sent in a time window. Most parts of the providers are “flexible”, with a limit of N emails per hour. Other providers are so strict that they drop emails if they are sent faster than every three seconds.
Problems started a few days ago
Are you 100% sure, you have not changed the configurations, If not then contact Orlando Web Wizard Tech Support.
Tests work, but newsletters not
First, test with a real newsletter. Set up a few test subscribers and send a test newsletter. If they ARE delivered, it can be a delivery engine problem.
Pressing the “send” button enqueues the newsletter to the delivery engine. It is moved to the sending status and the delivery engine, at the speed configured on the main Newsletter configuration panel, sends it to the targeted subscribers. If the delivery engine is not triggered by WordPress, no emails are sent. See the delivery engine documentation page.
If test newsletters ARE NOT delivered but tests from the diagnostic panel ARE, create an empty newsletter and test it. If it works you have a newsletter content problem. Things to check are:
- the mail body encoding (settable on main Newsletter configuration) -> try different values (usually base 64 works on every system, but we experienced cases where the 8 bit encoding was mandatory – your provider should be of help on that topic)
the content activates spam filters - check if you have images from other domains -> use only images from your blog domain
- disable the tracking feature
- remove all images
- remove all links
- empty the message and reconstruct it into little pieces testing on each change -> note what you add when it stops working again (can be a specific word, some time ago we had a user with a provider blocking emails with the “update” word inside!)
Spam filters can be installed on your provider server or on mail receiver servers.
Not all emails are delivered
First, confirm that this is a real issue and not just a hypothesis: how do you know that out of over 1000 emails sent, only a portion is delivered? If you’re certain that some emails are not being delivered (even though the Newsletter reports all were sent), you might be hitting a limit. For instance, you cannot send more than 100 emails to a specific server within one hour. Example: only 100 emails per hour to @yahoo.com, @hotmail.com, or @msn.com.
Enabling logs
On the Diagnostic panel, you can enable logs at the debug level (even if to check for any problems the default level should be enough). Log files are generated inside the folder “wp-content/logs/newsletter”. Reading log files is not easy but we can be of help in that task.
BACK TO OUR NEWSLTTER:
