CF7 breaks when using WP Mail smtp plugin

  • ionian

    (@ionian)


    4 years, 6 months ago

    Hi everyone,
    I see that a few people have had the same problem as me but seems there solution does not give me the answers I need.

    CF7 works fine but when I activate the WP Mail smtp plugin and try to submit the form I get an error saying that there was a problem and to try again later.

    I need the WP Mail plugin for something else but it would be good to have CF7 use it as well.

    Any ideas on where I am going wrong?

    Thanks for any advice you can give.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • darcyp

    (@darcyp)

    4 years, 6 months ago

    Hi,
    I literally just did this while trying to solve some issues on an old client site that wasn’t using authenticated SMTP. Everything else seems to work fine for email sending after setting up the WP Mail SMTP plugin except when I test the CF7 contact form, I got the dreaded “There was an error trying to send your message. Please try again later.” in an orange box.

    What worked for me: downgrade CF7 to version 5.1

    To do this I manually downloaded it from the bottom of the page here: Contact Form 7
    If you don’t know how to downgrade a plug-in, Google it. I manually replaced the contact-form-7 folder with the older version via FTP to the webserver.

    How did I arrive to this fix? Troubleshooting and digging around led me to here:
    Answers to issues with using reCAPTCHA v3 in Contact Form 7
    I already had reCAPTCHAv3 setup and working prior to this, but the issue seemed somehow related. Read a little further down to a item called: Theme needs to properly load JavaScript in footer of each page
    This got me thinking, I’m working on an old site with an old custom theme that’s never seen an update since 2012; I was already running CF7 5.1.2 and I already tried updating to the latest 5.1.4 and that didn’t fix it. So I figured maybe something between this theme, WP Mail, and CF7, and something not properly loading Javascript in the footer of each page is causing the problem. I’m not a coder. I did not try changing the theme to test because even if it worked there was no solution other than your theme is not compatible and get it updated. The troubleshooting page indicated this issue may come up for some who have upgraded to 5.1.1 or newer, so I decided to downgrade CF7 to 5.1 and voila, it worked!

    Downgrading CF7 may not be the best long term solution, but it got things working for me and still with reCAPTCHA v3.

    • This reply was modified 4 years, 6 months ago by darcyp.
    Neil Murray

    (@buzztone)

    4 years, 6 months ago

    CF7 works fine but when I activate the WP Mail smtp plugin and try to submit the form I get an error saying that there was a problem and to try again later.

    This indicates you have not configured the WP Mail smtp plugin correctly.

    I prefer to use Post SMTP Mailer/Email Log when I need to use SMTP (don’t use if you don’t need as it requires complex setup) as it includes excellent SMTP error checking & debugging.

    I see that a few people have had the same problem as me but seems there solution does not give me the answers I need.

    CF7 has 5+ million users – it’s common for hundreds of people to experience similar issues each day due to problems in their individual sites.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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