Can someone here help out on issues with Godaddy?

[Anonymous12]

Having spent a fruitless couple of days with GoDaddy's "Technical Support", I wonder if anyone on here could help.

I run my own server with a number of WordPress sites, and have no trouble with any of the forms.

However, I also look after an Association's website which is hosted by GoDaddy. The forms used to send out emails, but for some reason this stopped at some point in the past.

I have tried a number of things. First off, their forms were designed in Ninja Forms - not one I'm familiar with. So, I recreated the form in Formidable. Exactly the same problem. The completed form appears in the submissions log, but the email is not sent.

Following a very stressful conversation on chat with GoDaddy (where I was made to feel like a second class citizen!), I was sent a YouTube link to show me how to configure an SMTP Mailer PlugIn. Which I did, tested it - and email duly sent.

However, the form email was still not being sent. Contacted GoDaddy again - 40 minutes of totally useless chat later I gave up.

Contacted Formidable. They basically told me much the same thing - configure an SMTP Mailer. They recommended WP Mail SMTP. So I swapped to that. Same thing. Test email fine, form still wouldn't send.

Followed the next piece of advice and installed WP Mail Log. That shows the form email being correctly generated. But still not actually being sent.

Which all leads me back to my original conclusion that it is something in the way GoDaddy have configured things.

Despite having their "Ultimate Managed WordPress" package, I am still bashing my head against a brick wall. Their latest suggestion is:

"Yes you are absolutely correct from the last 4 hours it have been affected to all the GoDaddy customer as a internal issue on SMTP mailing is going failed, so all our admins are working on it to resolve this issue don't worry it will get fixed very soon in couple of hours."

I pointed out that this has been going on for much longer than this - and other internet forums suggest that we are not alone with this problem!

If anyone could offer any suggestions as to how to get this fixed, it would be very much appreciated.

[admin]

You could try using a different domain hosted elsewhere to send the emails as a quick fix and, if possible, disable the current Mail services at server level.

[Rasheed]

Quick question: are you sending the test emails to your email address but the forms are sending to a email address matching the site's domain name? I'm asking because this used to trip me up all the time.

If the answer is no then there's something else going on. But if the answer is yes (you receive the email fine but @domain addresses don't) then the answer is almost certainly that there's not an SPF record for the domain. This is especially true if the mail server is Microsoft 365 but Google's business mail can also be affected.

If the answer is yes then the mail server is going to balk when it receives incoming mail from a domain name it's the server for. It'll assume the message is being spoofed and block it. Setting an SPF record lets the mail server know your web server is authorized to send mail on the domain's "behalf."

A couple of clues: first you mentioned that it doesn't matter what form plugin you use. Since the problem would be with the domain name it wouldn't matter what plugin you used. Second, you said it used to work but "for some reason this stopped at some point in the past." The major email providers continue to tighten the screws on security, and at some point in the past they started requiring a lot more validation. That's where SPF records came in, and at some point it's possible you might need to add DMARK and DKIM records as well.

Another clue would be that adding SMTP clients hasn't helped. If they're using Microsoft or, I think, Google business mail you typically have to install a premium version (e.g. WP Mail SMPT Pro.) Otherwise you can run into the same default sendmail problem the forms generate.

By the way, plugins like WP Mail Log will typically show the email was generated and sent, but may not show if it bounced or was spam filtered. (Some mail servers won't acknowledge mail they're blocking because that's useful data for spammers.)

Anyway, ask GoDaddy support and/or your client's mail provider what the correct SPF record should be.

Again, this all applies only if you can send email to your non-association address but mail to the association's domain isn't working. But based on all the other things you've tried it's the first thing I'd try next.

[Annie]

So 9jarians can be this sensible @Rasheed

[AdeFemi]

So 9jarians can be this sensible @Rasheed

Are all Cameroonians sensible?

[Annie]

So 9jarians can be this sensible @Rasheed

Are all Cameroonians sensible?

You are so troublesome

[Annie]

@Anonymous12 How did you resolve it?