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Why Am I Not Getting Elementor Form Notifications?

By James LePage
 on July 17, 2020
Last modified on January 7th, 2022

Why Am I Not Getting Elementor Form Notifications?

By James LePage
 on July 17, 2020
Last modified on January 7th, 2022

In this article we're going to be discussing common causes of Elementor forms not sending email notifications, and how to fix them.

Elementor Pro comes with a built in form widget which is very helpful, as you don't need to install another plugin into your WordPress website. It's a great solution for those looking to collect contact entries, and powerful enough to go toe to toe with other solutions like WPForms or Gravity Forms.

Typically, when a user submits a form, an email notification is sent to the administrative user so they can respond to the query.

The base installation of Elementor doesn't come with any form database (form solutions like Gravity Forms do). That means that if you're not receiving emails, all user submissions are lost forever. Email is essential when it comes to Elementor forms, so you definitely need to get it working.

Test Your Form

We recommend testing your form before proceeding to any of the methods outlined in this article. First, from the Elementor back end, check to see that everything is set up correctly. This means that on submission, you should have an email notification set up, which sends a message to the administrative email for WordPress.

Make sure the “from email” matches your website’s domain. If your site can be found at example.com, the email should be something like website@example.com.

After you have ensured that all settings are correct, go to the front end of your website, and submit a form. Check your email to see if a notification has come through.

Spam?

If you haven't received an email from your Elementor form submission, the first thing to do is check your spam box. If the email displays in the spam, this is an issue, but it also means that the email sending mechanism isn't broken or misconfigured.

Emails not sending, and emails landing in spam are two different issues altogether. In 90% of all issues, your Elementor form is actually sending the email, but it's ending up in spam.

Install A Forms Database

An important thing to do when troubleshooting the Elementor form not sending emails is to implement a form database. This way, even if you're not receiving emails, when somebody submits their information, it ends up in a database that you can access.

We recommend using a free plugin called Elementor Contact Form DB, which stores Elementor Pro form submissions in WordPress. Every time you get a new submission, it will notify you on the admin back-end, so you'll be aware even if you aren't receiving email notifications.

Implementing this before trying to fix the email issue comes with two benefits.

First, it ensures that the Elementor form itself is actually working. If you submit a contact form, and it ends up in the database, you know that the form is working (even if the email notifications are not). If you submit a contact form and it doesn't end up in the database, then chances are the form is misconfigured, or there's a bug in Elementor.

Whatever the case is, doing this first ensures that you're not wasting time or loosing out on valuable form submissions.

Identifying the cause of the issue

As long as you have clarified that it is an email issue, and not a form issue (meaning form submissions show up in the Database), there are two main causes to notifications not ending up in your inbox.

The first cause is that the email isn't being sent from the WordPress website. This can be due to a number of issues, but most often, you're simply using a host that doesn't have the capabilities to send email. For example, Cloudways is our favorite hosting provider, but it doesn't come with support for sending or receiving email on its servers. To do this, you need to configure SMTP.

The second cause of an email not landing in your inbox is that it is getting caught as spam. This is by far the most common cause of a WordPress/Elementor form notification being sent but not being received.

To get a concrete understanding of what exactly is causing this issue, we recommend installing a free plugin called Post SMTP Mailer/Email Log. This tool will automatically scan your website and identify exactly why the email is failing to send.

First, install it on your website, then Submit an entry to your Elementor Pro form, and finally check the log that this tool generates. You'll be able to see the exact cause of the failed email.

By keeping this installed even after you have fixed the issue, you’ll be able to quickly identify any other issues, and track all email sent from your website.

Solutions to Elementor forms not sending email notifications

If the email isn't being sent by the WordPress website, the simplest solution is to implement another method of sending emails from the site. By replacing the method that isn't working with the method that is working, your Elementor Form will begin sending notifications that actually end up in your inbox.

If the form is sending notifications (which end up in spam), chances are your server's IP has been blacklisted. This is usually the case if you are on shared hosting (you can check your server’s IP status here). To fix this, all you need to do is implement SMTP.

As you can see, the general solution to Elementor forms not sending email notifications is to simply implement SMTP into your WordPress website.

What Is SMTP

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is an industry standard for sending emails. SMTP properly authenticates with the email recipient and tells them that the email is not spam because it sent from where it said it said from.

The reason that this method doesn't end up in your spam inbox (usually), is that the email provider sending the notifications is reputable and authenticated - not blacklisted by your email service provider.

By incorporating SMTP on your WordPress website, it replaces the default method that WordPress uses to send email. By default, WordPress uses a method called PHP Mailer, which is commonly used by spammers to send email. Because of this, most email clients like Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft Office, will block any email that is sent with his method. Best case scenario, it ends up in spam, worst case scenario it never gets delivered at all.

Two Plugin Solutions

There are two great solutions that you can implement onto your WordPress website. The first solution is called WP Mail SMTP by WPForms.

WP Mail SMTP by WPForms

This is a free plugin that allows you to connect with a SMTP sending service . This “fixes the email deliverability problem by reconfiguring WordPress to use a proper STMP provider when sending emails’.

This is the most popular SMTP plugin for WordPress (1 million+ Activations), because it's very easy to use and supports tons of SMTP solutions.

With WordPress, these plugins act as a way to integrate SMTP into your WordPress website. SMTP is a service, Meaning that it is typically provided by a third party. For most use cases (low volume transactional email ), you can find a free solution. If you have high volume email that requires SMTP sending, then you'll need to pay for it.

Setting this up is typically a good idea even if you need to pay for it because it ensures that your form notifications from Elementor (and all other emails sent from your WordPress website) get delivered.

Install the plugin an navigate to the initial settings page. Here you will set the “from email” and “sender name”. make sure that the from emails sending domain matches the domain of your website. Example.com Joe@example.com

Then, Configure the Mailer. This plugin acts as a way to easily integrate multiple SMTP providers.

Most SMTP providers allow you to easily integrate with their service by generating and using an API key.

In this example, we're going to use SMTP.com, simply because they are the recommended choice.

Once you've created an account with them, follow the link to get an API key, and follow the second link to get the sender name. Paste them into the fields below, and save the settings on the plugin.

As long as everything is properly entered, your website should now be sending emails via SMTP. Go to your Elementor form, submit something, and check your inbox. The form notification should now be front and center.

SendInBlue

The second SMTP solution is the SendInBlue plugin. With most of the solutions that the first plugin recommends, you can get a free trial but end up needing to pay for the service. This makes sense if your website is sending a large quantity of email notifications. However, if you're only sending a couple of day, there's no point in paying $25 per month for 50,000 emails.

In our opinion, this method is easier to install and configure than the first plugin. However, you need to manually have the team behind sending blue enabled transactional email, which can take up to 24 hours.

First, download and install the SendInBlue Plugin.

Once your plugin is installed, head over to SendInBlue & up for a free account. They offer 300 free transactional emails per day (you can send up to 40 in one hour), which is perfect for most small businesses that only get a few form notifications per day.

Once you have created an account, you will need to email their support (you can only use the live chat feature on their website) to get access to their transactional emails. This manual check is to stop spammers from using their free service.

it takes about a day for them to turn on the transactional email for your account. Once configured You'll need to access your API key and paste it into the plugin.

Use the “get your API from your account” link to quickly access your API key. Be sure to copy the version 2 “plug in” API key, and not the version 3.

Then, click the login button and you will have access to all of the features that send in blue has to offer. In this example, we will only be making use of their transactional email, but they also have the ability to create email marketing lists, SMS, and more.

Finally, activate email through sending blue bye clicking the yes radio button, choosing your sender, and sending a test email. After you send the test email, check your inbox. If the email shows up in the inbox, everything is working well.

We use this solution on our agency website, as well as most of our client web sites due to the quality and pricing of the service (discussed in our "Plugin Toolbox").

Conclusion

For most cases, the failure to receive an email notification generated by your Elementor Form comes down to deliverability. Replacing the WordPress default method of sending email with SMTP is the best way to ensure that form notifications end up in your inbox.

We hope that this article properly answered your question of “why am I not receiving notifications from my Elementor form?” and gave you a couple of great solutions to resolve this. If you need any additional help, feel free to reach out in the comments section.

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Natalius
Natalius
3 years ago

Hi, Thank you so much, I appreciated your article it's solved my problem with email notification

Lyna
Lyna
3 years ago

Thanks This is was a very helpful article!

spokendesigns
spokendesigns
2 years ago

Thank you! This is helpful. Is there a plugin or Elementor feature that sends out an email whenever the emails fail to send from a website? Thanks!

Article By
James LePage
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James LePage is the founder of Isotropic, a WordPress education company and digital agency. He is also the founder of CodeWP.ai, a venture backed startup bringing AI to WordPress creators.
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