Quickly Troubleshoot Kadence Form Block Email Delivery

TL;DR: If you’re not getting Kadence Form Block emails when submitting forms, check the Form Block settings. Ensure the Form Block is set up to send submissions by email using a “From” address that’s the same as the “Reply To” address. This should be an actual address using the same domain as the site where the form is located. If you need a more complex email routing solution, this article also explains how to configure WordPress, SMTP, and DNS settings so emails generated by WordPress get delivered.

If you’ve set up a contact form with the Kadence Form Block and the form submissions are not being sent by email, there are several possible causes. Most of them don’t involve Kadence. Email deliverability depends mainly on how you have configured WordPress, your domain name’s DNS settings for email, and the method you use to generate and send emails from WordPress.

First, you should verify that your site domain has not been blacklisted for spam. That would explain deliverability problems.

Second, you should confirm that your site is sending emails with a simple email logging plugin.

If you’re not blacklisted, the emails are being sent, and you are not receiving them, your Kadence Form Block settings are the place to start digging deeper.

Let’s take a look.

Kadence Form Block Email Action After Submit

First, check the Actions After Submit parameters in the Form Block settings.

The first option, Email, should be checked, as shown in the screenshot to the right.

Kadence Form Block Email Settings

Next, check the back-end Email Settings for the Form Block. The From Email and the Reply-To fields are what matter most, as shown in the screenshot.

Your form submission emails may not be delivered to a receiving mail host if they look spammy. They may look like spam if your settings create the following conditions:

• The “From” email does not match the domain of the website the form is on.
• The “From” email does not match the Administrative Email Address in WordPress’s General Settings.
• The “From” address is not a real email account or forwarding alias.
• The “Reply To” address differs from the “From” email.
• The “Email Subject” line is blank.
• The “Cc” and “Bcc” fields are used — or worse, they’re stuffed with multiple recipients.

Many email clients (the software applications used to send or receive email, like Gmail or Outlook) will not send an email with a blank subject line or no message content in the body of the email. Short nonsense messages for testing purposes look like spam and may not be sent or delivered.

The Simple Solution

Sending emails with a different domain in the “From” address than the “Reply To” may impair their deliverability. Some email providers may see the discrepancy as a sign of potential spam or phishing.

Consistency is your best bet to establish trust and improve your chances of having your emails delivered successfully. Consequently, the most straightforward and possibly the best way to ensure your Kadence form block emails are delivered is to keep the address consistent across both the “From” and “Reply To” fields. The From/Reply To address should also be the default Administration Email Address in WordPress’s General Settings.

Don’t forget to add Kadence CAPTCHAs to your forms to stop spammers!

The Not-So-Simple Solution

It may be convenient to use the default block settings and reply directly to emails from your form. You might want to have the reply go to the address associated with the form submission. Or, some email hosts may reject your form submission emails even when you have set things up as described above.

Setting Up WordPress to Send Legitimate Emails

By default, WordPress uses a mail function wp_mail() as a wrapper for the PHPMailer class, a PHP library for generating emails that extends the PHP mail() function. This can work fine, but by default, there is no authentication that the message was sent by the sender it names.

So many people have misconfigured and abused PHP for spammy purposes that email hosts are frequently suspicious of them. Any incoming message generated by PHP rather than an actual email user is more likely to be blocked by a spam filter. Your best bet to make PHP mail work for you is to ensure the domain it is using is set up to authenticate the validity of these emails.

DKIM, SPF, and DMARC

These are all types of TXT records in your DNS settings. DKIM validates the message, SPF validates the server it was sent from, and DMARC uses both DKIM and SPF to ensure an email’s “From” address matches a domain connected to a server that is correctly set up to send email. DMARC also indicates how recipients should handle emails that fail authentication, and it provides an email address for feedback about how your messages are being received.

Ideally, every domain with emails sent from or attributed to it by WordPress, a newsletter service, or any other application should have DKIM, SPF, and DMARC records adequately configured and maintained. If you’re using PHP to send emails, these steps are even more critical to establish their authenticity.

SMTP

Setting up WordPress to use SMTP instead of PHP to send emails is the most common solution to deliverability problems.

Some managed WordPress hosts may offer built-in or third-party SMTP services to handle WordPress-generated transactional emails. If you use a host like this, you may need to do little or nothing to set up WordPress for SMTP. This used to be a common offering among WordPress hosts; today, you are more likely to need to set up your own SMTP service. Mailgun and Postmark are commonly recommended and low or no-cost options. These require a plugin to be installed that will then send emails via their service.

You can also use Gmail. Many WordPress plugins and tutorials explain how to set up WordPress to send email via SMTP on a free Gmail account. However, there are limits, and there is no guarantee Google will support this unofficially supported use of free Gmail accounts. They do explicitly support apps using SMTP with Google Workspace.

Whatever SMTP service you choose to use, you will need to tell WordPress how to access it by completing the following settings and adding them to wp-config.php:

// SMTP Settings
define( 'SMTP_username', '[email protected]' );  // SMTP Username
define( 'SMTP_password', 'password' );            // SMTP Password
define( 'SMTP_server', 'smtp.email.com' );        // SMTP Server Address
define( 'SMTP_FROM', '[email protected]' );      // "From" Email Address
define( 'SMTP_NAME', 'Your Name' );               // "From" Name
define( 'SMTP_PORT', '587' );                     // Server Port Number, usually 25, 465 or 587
define( 'SMTP_SECURE', 'tls' );                   // Encryption - SSL or TLS
define( 'SMTP_AUTH', true );                      // Use SMTP authentication (True or False)
define( 'SMTP_DEBUG',   0 );                      // Turn debugging on/off (0 or 1)

Then you will need to add the following action as an active code snippet or as part of the active theme’s functions.php file:

add_action( 'phpmailer_init', 'my_phpmailer_smtp' );
function my_phpmailer_smtp( $phpmailer ) {
    $phpmailer->isSMTP();     
    $phpmailer->Host = SMTP_server;  
    $phpmailer->SMTPAuth = SMTP_AUTH;
    $phpmailer->Port = SMTP_PORT;
    $phpmailer->Username = SMTP_username;
    $phpmailer->Password = SMTP_password;
    $phpmailer->SMTPSecure = SMTP_SECURE;
    $phpmailer->From = SMTP_FROM;
    $phpmailer->FromName = SMTP_NAME;
}

Now PHPMailer will use SMTP, and WordPress will send emails through an authenticated mail user and mail server. That alone should ensure reasonably high deliverability. Set up your DKIM, SPF, and DMARC records to ensure the highest deliverability and open rates.

You may find it easier to set up SMTP with any number of mail providers using a plugin designed for this purpose. Nathan Ingram recommends one and digs deeper into this topic in this article. Kiki Sheldon provides even more technical depth in a tutorial about setting up SMTP on Nexcess Managed WordPress Hosting.

Four Simple Steps to Ensure Kadence Form Block Emails are Delivered

In summary, if you’re experiencing issues with email delivery from Kadence Form Block, you can take several troubleshooting steps. While most of the potential problems are not directly related to Kadence, they can be resolved by checking and configuring the WordPress and DNS settings we’ve discussed here.

1. First, ensuring that your site domain has not been blacklisted for spam is important, as this can impact email deliverability. Additionally, you should confirm that your site is actually sending out emails by using an email logging plugin.
2. If you’ve ruled out blacklisting and verified that emails are being sent, you should focus on the Kadence Form Block settings. Check the block’s “Actions After Submit” parameters and ensure that the “Email” option is selected. Pay attention to the “From Email” and “Reply-To” fields in the Email Settings, making sure they meet certain criteria. For example, the “From” email should match the domain of the website where the form is located, and it should be a real email account using the same domain.
3. The simplest solution to improve email deliverability is to keep the “From” and “Reply To” addresses consistent and use the default Administration Email Address in WordPress’s General Settings. This consistency establishes trust and reduces the chances of emails being flagged as spam.
4. However, if you require a more complex email routing solution, you may need to configure WordPress, SMTP, and your DNS settings. WordPress uses wp_mail() and PHPmailer by default, but they lack authentication, which can raise suspicions among email spam filters. Configuring DKIM, SPF, and DMARC records in your DNS settings helps validate the authenticity of emails created and sent by WordPress. Another common solution is to set up WordPress to use SMTP instead of PHP to send emails. This involves specifying the SMTP setting, adding them to the wp-config.php file, and adding a function that makes PHPmailer use SMTP.

By following these troubleshooting steps and ensuring proper configuration of WordPress, your DNS settings, and Kadence Form Blocks, you can ensure the deliverability of Kadence Form Block emails. Remember to implement additional measures like adding CAPTCHAs to your forms to block incoming spam. Taking these actions will help ensure that your form submissions are successfully delivered to your inbox.