Do you want to be notified when your WordPress emails stop working?
Emails play a critical role in keeping your business communications up and running. Any unrecognized email sending issues in WordPress can lead to lost leads and even money.
This is why it’s important to set up alerts so that you can instantly learn about email failures on your site and fix them as soon as they occur.
In this post, we’ll show you how you can get WordPress email failure alerts on different apps of your choice.
Why Do WordPress Emails Stop Working?
In WordPress, the default method for sending emails is PHP Mail. However, many web hosts turn off the PHP Mail function due to security issues associated with it.
The result is that WordPress emails simply fail to send completely. In some cases, your emails may be ending up in the spam folder even if the PHP Mail function is enabled.
Most of the time, these issues can be fixed by reconfiguring your WordPress site to use SMTP instead of PHP Mail. This is pretty easy to do with plugins like WP Mail SMTP, which let you connect your WordPress site with a dedicated mailer service.
It’s still possible for email errors to occur on your site even if you’re using SMTP. Usually, this happens if you haven’t gone through the proper authentication steps with your mailer service.
Whatever the cause of the email sending issue on your site, you can set up alert notifications so you can identify the problem and fix it immediately.
How to Get Alerts When Your WordPress Emails Stop Working
There are a few ways you can get alerts for WordPress email failure. We’ll show you the complete steps for each method below.
In This Article
Installing WP Mail SMTP
To set up email failure alerts in WordPress, you’ll need to install WP Mail SMTP. This plugin includes several really useful features including alert notifications for email issues.
WP Mail SMTP is designed to fix your WordPress email issues because it uses SMTP, which is a faster, safer, and more reliable method of sending emails compared to PHP Mail.
However, issues can still arise if your mailer service undergoes an outage, the site isn’t properly connected with your mailer account, or if there’s a domain authentication issue with your mailer.
No matter the cause of the problem, WP Mail SMTP will send you a notification whenever an email fails to send from your site.
To get started, grab a WP Mail SMTP Pro license. After that, install WP Mail SMTP on your site and connect a mailer using the easy setup wizard.
After setting up your mailer, you’ll see additional features you can enable in WP Mail SMTP, including Instant Email Alerts.
You can enable notification alerts for email failure by turning this option on here, then adjust the settings as needing by following the steps below. We’ll also show you how to set up email failure alerts for Slack, SMS, and other methods.
Configuring Email Failure Alerts
To set up email alerts, open your WordPress dashboard and go to WP Mail SMTP » Settings. On the Settings page, find the Alerts tab on the horizontal bar and click on it.
The Alerts page contains the settings for configuring integrations with different available services to receive your alert notifications, including:
- Slack
- SMS via Twilio
- Custom webhooks
Let’s see how you can enable each of these one by one.
Method #1: Email Integration for Failure Alerts
The first method involves receiving email failure alerts via email. WP Mail SMTP has the capability to deliver email failure alerts to your inbox even when emails have generally stopped working for your site otherwise.
To get email failure alerts via email, toggle on the Email Alerts switch. Then, you can simply enter the email address you’d like to receive notifications at in the Send To field.
You can add up to 3 email addresses to integrate your email failure alerts. Just click on the Add Another Email Address button to open another Send To field where you can provide your second email address. If you want to add another one, just repeat the same process.
When you’re done, scroll to the bottom and press Save Settings.
Now, every time an email failure occurs on your WordPress site, WP Mail SMTP will notify you on your provided email address. The notification contains important details like the error message and helpful links to enable you to identify the problem and fix it quickly.
In the next step, we’ll show you how to set up an integration with Slack for email failure notifications.
Method #2: Email Failure Alerts via Slack
Integrating alert notifications with Slack makes a lot of sense because it’s the platform that most teams use for business communication.
As a result, you can never miss a notification popping up right within your preferred Slack channel or even as a DM to individual members of your team.
To enable this integration, toggle the Slack Alerts button to the on position.
This integration requires a webhook URL for your Slack workspace. To get that, visit your Slack API page and click on the Create an App button.
This will open a modal giving you two options for creating an app. Choose From Scratch.
The next modal will require you to enter an App Name. This can be anything you like (you can also change this later).
Below App Name, there’s another dropdown that requires you to select your Slack workspace for this integration. Be careful when choosing the workspace because you won’t be able to change this later on.
After entering the details above, click on the Create App button to proceed.
After that, a new dialog box for adding display information for your Slack app will appear. You can add an icon, background color, and change other details here.
When you’re satisfied with how everything looks, click on Save Changes.
Now, from your Slack API page, navigate to Features » Incoming Webhooks from the sidebar.
Use the toggle button to Activate Incoming Webhooks.
After that, click on the Add New Webhook to Workspace button.
On the next screen, you can choose a channel or individual to directly send email failure notifications to. Click on Allow after selecting your desired Slack channel.
After this action, Slack will generate a webhook URL for you, and you’ll be redirected to the Incoming Webhooks page. Copy the webhook URL.
Now, return to the Alerts page in WP Mail SMTP settings and paste your Slack webhook URL in the Webhook URL field.
You can repeat these steps to add webhooks for other Slack channels to receive email failure notifications.
Don’t forget to Save Settings when you’re done.
Method #3: Alert Notifications via SMS
WP Mail SMTP also supports SMS notifications for WordPress email sending errors. This is a really convenient option because you don’t even need to be connected to the internet to receive SMS notifications.
The SMS notification setup requires a Twilio integration. To start, first enable the SMS via Twilio Alerts option in WP Mail SMTP Alert settings.
You’ll now need to enter a few details about your Twilio account to make this integration work. If you don’t yet have a Twilio phone number, you can read Twilio’s doc to get started.
When you’ve created your Twilio account and got your Twilio phone number, open your Twilio console. From here, copy your Account SSID, Auth Token, and Twilio Phone Number.
Now, return to your WP Mail SMTP Alerts settings, and enter these copied details into the fields under SMS section via Twilio section.
Please note that your Twilio phone number should go into the From Phone Number field and the To Phone Number should have the number where you want to receive the email failure notifications.
You can add multiple phone numbers if you’d like. Just click on the Add Another Account button and repeat the process as before with a new number this time.
Due to the character limits of SMS, the SMS alerts are not as detailed as other integrations. But they still contain valuable information to notify you of an email failure.
Lastly, we’ll show you how to receive notifications via custom webhooks.
Method #4: Email Failure Alerts via Custom Webhooks
The WP Mail SMTP Alerts feature enables you to receive notifications with any service that supports custom webhooks.
Just enable the Webhooks Alerts option and insert the Webhook URL you’d like to use to receive notifications whenever an email error occurs.
Remember that you can set up all of the above notification integrations if you’d like to receive alerts via multiple platforms at the same time.
And that’s it! You’re now ready to get alerts on your favorite apps when your WordPress emails stop working.
Next, Set Up a Backup Connection for WP Mail SMTP
Want to automatically resend emails if your mailer fails? You can set up additional connections in WP Mail SMTP Pro, then select a Backup Connection. If your Primary Connection isn’t working for some reason, WP Mail SMTP will try sending emails using your Backup Connection instead.
You may also want to check out our post on changing WordPress notification email address. And here’s our guide to sending emails from localhost using SMTP.
Ready to fix your emails? Get started today with the best WordPress SMTP plugin. If you don’t have the time to fix your emails, you can get full White Glove Setup assistance as an extra purchase, and there’s a 14-day money-back guarantee for all paid plans.
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i need help your advise to take course fill in step by step by email.
Hi Songpol,
Please create a support thread by including more details, and our support staff will be able to assist you further.
Thanks!