Trouble Shooting Email Notifications from Drupal

Posted by Steve Kenley on Jul 17, 2015 9:00:00 AM

Email Notifications

Email is a fantastic tool, but can be very unreliable at times. If your Drupal website uses web forms you probably use email to notify you when a form on your site has been submitted. You might find that you’re not receiving those emails for one reason or another, so here are a few troubleshooting tips to try when that happens.

  1. Check your spam/junk box.
  2. If the emails are being delivered to your junk box, try marking them as “not spam” if your email client allows. You may also try creating a rule to have the messages sent to a specific folder.
  3. If the emails are not being delivered:
      1. Check the email addresses on the forms for accuracy. Be sure to check spelling carefully.
      2. If you have recently gone live with a new site, check with your IT department to see if there are white/black lists or filters/firewalls that need to be configured.
      3. Consider creating an account with SMTP2Go, which will provide you with reliable SMTP services.
        1. STMP2Go provides three different levels of service starting at $15 per month. We have been using SMTP2Go for years and have enjoyed a very high rate of success with the service.
        2. SMTP2Go provides a robust set of reports to track all your emailing activity and help you know what can be done to ensure email delivery is successful.
        3. If you have your own SMTP server, the site can be configured to use that as well. Your IT department will likely have to make some firewall adjustments to allow the site to access the server.
        4. Once you have a new SMTP server set up, there is some configuration required on the site. This is usually something that your web developer can help you with. 

  4. In the meantime, you can always track your form submissions via the website administrative interface. Just log into the site, navigate to Structure>Webforms>Forms, find the form you want to check on, and choose “Results” from the dropdown under the Operations column. By doing so, you can ensure that you are not missing any submissions during the troubleshooting process.
  5. It is recommended that you check the results on your forms on a regular basis; to be sure you never miss a submission.

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Steve Kenley

Written by Steve Kenley

Steve is a senior developer with a B.S. in IT Software Engineering and an M.S. in IT and Web Design. He's been keeping things running smoothly at Tribute Media since 2012.