It can be frustrating for both the visitor who completes the contact form on your website, and you, as the website owner, when a contact form doesn’t do its job. The visitor thinks the message has sent successfully but you never got it – they think you’re not interested and you’re none the wiser. Contact forms can offer a lot of benefits but if it’s not working you need to do something about it.
To test your contact form, we recommend using a different email address than the one it’s going to, wait up to 20 minutes for it to arrive and always check your spam/junk mail folder, just in case.
Related: I’m getting too much spam through my contact form.
So, if you didn’t receive an email after completing the form, here are three ways to fix the problem.
1 – Check the contact form is setup correctly
Firstly, make sure you are running the latest version of the Contact Form 7 plugin (Plugins menu).
Then, check your form mail details are correct (see below for an example). Ideally, you should be sending from an actual, working email address. Contact Form 7 may also prompt you if there appears to be an error with your form configuration.
You may also consider adding a success message to request visitors email you directly if they don’t hear from you within a reasonable amount of time.
2 – Try an SMTP plugin
Using an SMTP plugin can help improve both the reliability and speed of emails received from your WordPress website. So, even if your contact form is currently working, you may consider adding an SMTP plugin simply to improve the speed of delivery.
An SMTP plugin is particularly important when using a third-party email service, such as Zoho, Google or Microsoft Outlook, to make sure these services authenticate any messages coming through the website.
Well-known SMTP plugins include Easy WP SMTP and WP Mail SMTP by WPForms, and can be added via the Plugins menu > Add New. You’ll need to know the SMTP settings for your email service – see below for an example.
After saving your configuration settings, test to make sure it’s working correctly.
3 – Remove the form and offer alternatives
It sounds drastic but if you can’t trust the website contact form to pass on messages then you might be better off without it (say it out loud to the form – this may scare it into working?).
Just list all your alternative contact options on the contact page: Email address, phone number, social media page link (e.g. Facebook) or any other popular communication channel you use.
Whatever you offer, just make sure it’s working and you’re replying to customers in a timely fashion (we recommend one working day or less, although some channels, such as social media and phone, a faster response may be expected).
We can help upgrade your contact options, including offering click-to-call on phone numbers (for mobile users) or integrating with your Facebook Messenger account so website visitors can chat directly to you, or receive a range of automated replies based on their question.
Speaking of communication, talk to us if you need help with your email campaigns – we’re an official Mailchimp Partner and can assist with all things related to setting up and delivering customer emails.