Troubleshoot not receiving email from website contact form

If you’ve noticed that the contact form on your website isn’t delivering messages as expected, follow the steps to below to make sure that your contact form is set up correctly and that all messages reach your inbox.

1. Make sure the email address you are sending from exists: To have your email sending work, the email address needs to exist

a. To create an email address on a new domain name, go to Add a domain name to your hosting account
b. To create an email address, go to Create an email address

2. Check contact form settings: Make sure that the email address entered in your contact form’s settings is correct and typo-free

3. Test the contact form: Send a test email through the form to verify if the issue occurs every time

4. Inspect spam/junk folders: Look in your email spam or junk folder to see if the messages are being misdirected there

5. Review email filters and rules: Check if any filters or rules set up in your email that might be blocking or redirecting emails from the contact form

6. Confirm SMTP settings: If your form uses SMTP for email sending, verify that the SMTP details are accurate.

If your domain name is connected to an external email service such as Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 or others – and you would like to use the mail server on your Skystra hosting account to receive mail from your website contact form – follow the steps under the ⚠️ External Email Service / Local SMTP section further below.

7. Update your contact form plugin: If you’re using a plugin for the contact form, update it to the latest version as fixes for known issues are often included in updates

8. Check for coding errors: If your contact form is custom-coded, review the code or have a developer check for mistakes that could affect email delivery

9. Check reCAPTCHA settings: If you’re using reCAPTCHA on your contact form, check the settings to make sure nothing is blocking normal mail sending and delivery

⚠️ External Email Service / Local SMTP

1. Open and complete the steps in this guide: create an email address – you need to create an email mailbox for the email address connected to your website contact form. Make sure to note down both the email address and password on a secure note you can reference later as you will need these credentials when filling in the details for your contact form SMTP settings.

2. Now you need to locate and note down your hosting account hostname, otherwise known as the Server Name. To find your hosting account server name, follow these steps:

• a. Log in to your Skystra user portal
• b. If you have multiple hosting services, select the correct one from the dropdown. If you only have one hosting service, it will be selected by default.

• c. Locate and click on the Hosting Information tab
• d. Your server hostname is indicated on the Server Name row. In our example, the server hostname is:
  axm98k6-compute.skystra.com

3. Now, go to your website administrator dashboard. If you have a WordPress website, this would be your wp-admin dashboard area where you should already have a WordPress contact form plugin installed and running for your contact form(s). If you are using a different app, go to your app’s admin area.

4. Once in your admin area, go to your contact form settings and find the SMTP settings.

If you have a WordPress website, this would be the contact form plugin settings. Inside the settings, locate the SMTP section. If your contact form plugin does not have an SMTP section in the settings – you will have to install and activate a WordPress SMTP Plugin. Any WordPress plugin with SMTP functionality will do – for example, you can use WP Mail SMTP by WPForms, which is popular.

If you use a different app for your website (non-WordPress) – simply locate the section where you can configure the email settings for your contact forms and/or SMTP settings.

5. Once you’ve accessed the SMTP settings – enable and fill in the following settings (naming may vary by app and plugin used):

• Mailer Type: Other SMTP
• SMTP Host: Your hosting account hostname (The Server Name you found above)
• Encryption: TLS
• SMTP Port: 587
• Authentication: Enabled (ON)
• SMTP Username: Your email address
• SMTP Password: Your email address password

Important: Remember the email address and email address password need to match the ones you created in the first step (1.) on your hosting account or else the SMTP connection will not work.

6. Click to Save your SMTP settings. Once you’ve saved the settings, your contact form will send out mail using the mail server on your hosting service.