If your WordPress website isn’t sending emails, you’ve come to the right place, and here’s the definitive guide on how to fix this problem. Whether you are not receiving important notifications of core updates, plugins, themes or other issues related to your WordPress; or messages from your contact forms, these problems can severely impact the daily tasks of your business or your operations.
Although it may seem like a particular problem, this is an issue that occurs often, and is a reason for consultation of our WordPress hosting users, so we are going to explain why it happens and how to fix it at once. We will be happy that if you manage to fix it, share this solution with your colleagues, as it is important that everyone can configure their WordPress email correctly and work with peace of mind knowing that they will not miss a single email or notification.
If you have already checked your junk mailboxes and verified that your email address is correctly entered in the WordPress settings, then the problem must be a little deeper.
Why WordPress doesn’t send emails
By default WordPress uses the PHP function called “mail()” or “PHP mail” to send emails. Fortunately, many web hosting providers are not configured to use this function, making it impossible to process those emails. So why not configure the server so that it can? The PHP “mail” function is very easy to use and it is enough to pass a couple of variables for the mail server to send a message, something that makes it an unsafe server to the point that anyone who has access to your WordPress or to a form included in it because of a vulnerability, can send emails at will.
This can cause from the server’s mail queue to fill up, to the server falling into a spam blacklist from which it is difficult to remove it and regain the trust of email providers. Another (mis)use of sites that have PHP’s mail function configured by default is spoofing or phishing; something that is all the rage these days.
The opposite of the PHP mail() function is that the emails are authenticated and secure, and that is what we will explain today.
We at WNPower are particularly aware of the risks of leaving the mail() function open, and we won’t spare your WordPress from a vulnerability like this. We want your site to run great, fast, we want your SMTP mail server to stay healthy, and we don’t want you to receive any complaints that your site was used for malicious purposes.
