Form Monitor for Contact Form 7 – Email Delivery Alerts

Description

Contact Form 7 can break silently. A plugin update, a mail-server change, an
expired SMTP password, or a hosting move, and your enquiries stop arriving.
Nothing on your site looks wrong. The form still says “Thank you for your
message.” You find out weeks later, when a customer asks why nobody called back.

Arvelos Form Monitor catches it for you. On a schedule, and again right
after every plugin, theme, or WordPress update, it sends a real test submission
through your live Contact Form 7 forms and checks that it goes through. If a
check fails, you get an email. When it recovers, you get another. When
everything is fine, you hear nothing.

  • Tests run through your actual forms, not a simulated copy.
  • Test messages never reach your real recipients and never bypass your spam
    protection.
  • Re-checks automatically after updates, when forms most often break.
  • Works across all your client sites: one subscription covers up to 10 sites.

Pricing: the plugin is free, and your first test is free. Scheduled
monitoring is a subscription through the Arvelos service; current pricing is at
https://clickarvelos.com/products/wordpress-form-monitoring/.

How it works: this plugin is the small piece that runs on your site. It
pairs with a free Arvelos account (create one at
https://forms.clickarvelos.com/onboarding), which runs the tests and sends the
alerts. On its own, without pairing, the plugin does nothing and sends nothing.

What a passing status means: a controlled test submission was accepted by
your form and its notification reached a mailbox Arvelos controls for the test.

What it does not mean: it does not verify your real inbox and does not
guarantee delivery of real visitor enquiries. It is a signal from a synthetic
test, not a delivery guarantee.

Boundaries this plugin respects:

  • It only authorizes a submission that carries a valid, unexpired, single-use,
    site-scoped token issued by the Arvelos service. It never mints tokens itself
    and never authorizes an ordinary visitor submission.
  • It never circumvents a CAPTCHA (reCAPTCHA, hCaptcha, Turnstile). A form
    protected by one is reported as unsupported and is not monitored.
  • A synthetic run’s notification is routed to the Arvelos verification address
    (an Arvelos-controlled mailbox) and is never delivered to your real recipients
    as if it were a real enquiry.
  • It transmits nothing to Arvelos until you pair the site by entering your
    Site ID and secret.

External services

This plugin connects to Arvelos Form Monitor, a hosted service operated
by Arvelos Software, so the service can run and confirm the synthetic tests
described above. The service is what makes the plugin useful; without pairing,
the plugin sends nothing.

Service endpoint: https://forms.clickarvelos.com

What is sent to Arvelos, and when — only after you pair the site:

  • When you save your pairing settings, the plugin asks the service to verify
    control of this site. The request contains your Site ID. The service then
    fetches a public, read-only proof route on your site (below) to confirm the
    plugin is installed here and holds the paired secret.
  • When you rotate your secret, the plugin sends a signed rotation request
    containing your Site ID and a timestamp.
  • After a plugin, theme, or WordPress core update completes, the plugin sends a
    single debounced, signed “site updated” event containing your Site ID and
    a timestamp, so the service can re-test promptly instead of waiting for its
    next scheduled check.

The rotation and “site updated” requests above are signed with your per-site
secret; the initial pairing request is not signed — instead Arvelos confirms
control by fetching the public proof route below, which is derived from your
secret. The plugin does not send your form submissions, your visitors’ data, or your
real recipient addresses to the service. The Arvelos verification address that a
synthetic notification is routed to is built into the plugin — you never enter,
store, or manage it, and run correlation uses a per-run single-use code, not the
address itself.

Public route this plugin exposes: once paired, the plugin serves a read-only
REST route, GET /wp-json/orion-fm/v1/pairing, that returns a fixed
proof-of-control value derived from your secret. It exposes no submission data
and is a 404 until the site is paired.

This plugin connects your site to Arvelos Form Monitor, a paid hosted
service operated by Arvelos Software. Your use of that service, and the
data it handles, are governed by the Arvelos Terms of Service and Privacy
Policy, which cover Arvelos Form Monitor specifically:

  • Terms of Service: https://clickarvelos.com/terms/
  • Privacy Policy: https://clickarvelos.com/privacy/

The Privacy Policy describes what the service stores (your account email,
connected site and form identifiers, alert recipient, billing identifiers
via Stripe, and monitoring results) and confirms that your real visitors’
submissions are never sent to or stored by the service.

Privacy

This plugin stores your Arvelos pairing details (Site ID, per-site secret) in
your site’s options table. The secret is never
exposed to the front end. See External services above for exactly what the
plugin transmits to Arvelos and when, and the linked Privacy Policy for how the
Arvelos service handles data.

Support

Support is by email through Arvelos: https://clickarvelos.com/support/

Installation

  1. Install and activate Contact Form 7 (required).
  2. Install and activate Arvelos Form Monitor.
  3. Add your site and form at https://forms.clickarvelos.com/onboarding to get
    a Site ID and per-site secret.
  4. Go to Settings Arvelos Form Monitor and enter the pairing details from
    your Arvelos account: your Site ID and your per-site secret. The Arvelos
    endpoint and the verification address are built in and need no configuration.
  5. Save. The plugin proves control of your site to Arvelos; nothing runs until
    that verification succeeds. Arvelos then runs one free test and emails you
    the result. Scheduled and after-update checks need an active subscription.

FAQ

Why would Contact Form 7 stop sending emails?

Common causes are an SMTP or mail-plugin change, an expired email password, a
new host or DNS change, a security or caching plugin update, or a change to the
form itself. The form usually still shows its success message, which is why the
failure goes unnoticed. Scheduled tests catch it within one check.

Do I need a Contact Form 7 installation?

Yes. Contact Form 7 is required; the plugin will not run without it and will
show a notice asking you to install and activate it.

Do I need an Arvelos account?

Yes. This plugin is the companion to the hosted Arvelos Form Monitor
service. You pair it with an Arvelos account; on its own it does not monitor
your forms. Sign up and add your site at
https://forms.clickarvelos.com/onboarding.

What does it cost?

The plugin is free. The Arvelos service runs one free test per form after you
connect it. Scheduled and after-update monitoring is a paid subscription;
current pricing is at https://clickarvelos.com/products/wordpress-form-monitoring/.

Will my real visitors be affected?

No. The plugin only ever changes behaviour for a single request that carries a
valid, single-use Arvelos token, and only to let that one synthetic test
through supported spam checks on a CAPTCHA-free form. Ordinary visitor
submissions are untouched.

Will the synthetic test email my real recipients?

No. A synthetic run’s notification is redirected to the Arvelos verification
address (an Arvelos-controlled mailbox) and clearly marked as a test. Your
configured recipients are not contacted for a synthetic run.

What about forms protected by a CAPTCHA?

The plugin never circumvents a CAPTCHA. A form protected by reCAPTCHA,
hCaptcha, or Turnstile is reported as unsupported and is not monitored.

Does the plugin send any data before I set it up?

No. Nothing is sent to Arvelos until you pair the site by entering your Site ID
and secret.

Reviews

There are no reviews for this plugin.

Contributors & Developers

“Form Monitor for Contact Form 7 – Email Delivery Alerts” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

Changelog

0.1.1

  • Settings screen and readme now link to the Arvelos sign-up page, so you can
    get a Site ID without leaving the plugin.
  • Clarified what happens after pairing: one free test, then scheduled checks
    with a subscription.

0.1.0

  • Initial release: synthetic-test authorization, single-use token verification,
    CAPTCHA-aware unsupported detection, synthetic notification routing to the
    Arvelos verification address, a proof-of-control pairing route, secret
    rotation, and a debounced post-update re-test signal.