A hard bounce is permanent and a soft bounce is temporary, but the real problem is that WordPress can’t see either one. Here’s how to tell them apart, read the SMTP error codes, and find and fix both types of bounce on your site.
Your emails say they’re sending. The logs look clean, the success message pops up, and everything seems fine. Then a customer asks why they never got their password reset, and you realize your mail has been quietly landing in spam for weeks.
Testing your deliverability turns that guesswork into a clear score you can act on.
Here’s the full process, step by step. Run a spam score test, check your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records, send a real test from WordPress, and read an inbox placement report.
SMTP, IMAP, and POP3 are easy to confuse, but the distinction is simple: SMTP sends your email, while IMAP and POP3 receive it. Learn how all three protocols work, which ports they use, and what it means for the emails your website sends.
Mailjet is an all-in-one email platform built for both transactional and marketing emails, and it’s quickly become a go-to choice for WordPress users who want reliable delivery without juggling multiple tools.
But is it actually worth using for your site? In this Mailjet review, I break down everything that matters: pricing, deliverability, ease of setup, and standout features like real-time team collaboration, automation, and email validation.
Use your favorite SMTP provider to reliably send your WordPress emails.
Gmail’s Promotions tab is one of the most overlooked deliverability problems for site owners. Order confirmations, password resets, and contact form notifications get filtered there more often than most people realize, and customers miss them.
The good news is that this is fixable. This guide covers 11 proven methods to get your emails into the Primary inbox, plus the testing tools you can use to confirm your changes are working.
Your WordPress site says the email sent. No errors, no failures, the log shows green. But the recipient never got it.
This isn’t a sending problem, it’s a delivery problem, and the fix depends on where the email actually died. Walk through the diagnostic process: confirm what happened, decode the bounce, check authentication and reputation, and rule out the WordPress-specific quirks that break delivery.