Website Contact Form Use And Settings

 

When a website contact form is filled & submitted, that submission’s information is emailed to the address assigned in the form’s settings. And while email is convenient for busy people, there is always another reliable option: a website owner can login and review contact form submission messages in the website dashboard. For that option go to ‘Forms’ then to ‘Entries’ and all submission messages will be listed in reverse chronological order; however and with email being the preferred option, there is a common situation where something about the incoming email trips up email host spam & blocking filters. So let’s look at why and how to deal with it.

 

What To Do When Email Notifications Fail To Arrive In Inboxes

What should a business do if it is not receiving contact form email in a specific inbox?

1. First, check Spam folders for in case messages are being routed there. Like it or not, we have to own our spam files day to day.

1. a) If good messages are in a spam folder then mark as “Not Spam” using whatever option the email provider offers in order to prevent form entries from landing there again.

2. If the email are NOT in Spam, then login to the website and check to be certain the correct receive- email address is assigned in the form settings. Often, in the heat of design and development, an address is setup based upon logic at the time. In many cases, that email address later proves to be wrong for this purpose.

2. a) Also double- check the “Email to” field to be certain its entered correctly. If not then correct, re- set the app and test!

3. Because the issue may lie with the email hosts’ definition of spam and/ or its’ spam blocking setup, a business may want to have the form set up to email multiple addresses. If so, be sure to separate each address with a comma.

3. a) Once multiple addresses are setup, test the form and check each all email inboxes. If any receive an email it proves the contact form application works and the email host is the issue. 99% of the time we find this is the case because the apps work – its’ the email host who’s random definition of spam setup that is the issue.

4. Regardless of all the above, it is always pro- active to have the email inbox host whitelist both a) the website host IP address and b) the website/server/contact form host email address.

Delivering contact form email can be tricky and there are situations where incoming email is blocked by its’ host. Worse, the email host is less than cooperative in troubleshooting the issue. If contact form email notification messages do not arrive in the Inbox of choice or its’ Spam folder and the email host claims the website form application is at fault, well then a logical course of action may be to switch email hosts. If so, we recommend Gmail; preferably Google Apps class Gmail.