hello using theme twenty twenty four. I have superb addons plugin for the contact form. I have configured the admin notification settings. the form seems to work, i get a successful submission message, but the email to my designated email address (hosted on IONOS, the whole wordpress site is hosted on IONOS) doesn’t arrive. Nor does a user notification email ever arrive. is there anything am missing here please? I checked and I can send and receive standard emails to the above mentioned designated email address, but the contact form notification doesn’t seem to work. thank you
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Hi, thanks for the detailed report, and glad to hear the form itself is submitting correctly.
Superb Addons hands its notification emails to WordPress’s built-in email function (the same one WordPress core and most other plugins use). Your web server is then responsible for actually delivering them. When emails are not delivered by the WordPress email function, it is almost always the hosting server’s outgoing mail being rejected or filtered somewhere along the way.
Your regular mailbox working fine does not rule this out. Receiving mail in the mailbox and the web server being allowed to send mail are two separate things.
Here is what I would suggest, in order:
Check the spam/junk folder of the recipient address, just to rule it out.
Check the “From” address in the form’s email settings (and your WordPress admin email). It should be an address on your own website’s domain, ideally an actual IONOS mailbox like info@yourdomain.com. If the From address is a Gmail, Outlook or other third-party address, most mail providers will reject the message outright these days because your server is not allowed to send on that domain’s behalf.
The most reliable fix: install a free SMTP plugin such as WP Mail SMTP or FluentSMTP and configure it with your IONOS mailbox using the “Other SMTP” option.
An IONOS SMTP setup in such a plugin may look something like this:
SMTP host: smtp.ionos.com (or smtp.ionos.co.uk / smtp.ionos.de depending on your region)
Port: 587 with TLS/STARTTLS (or 465 with SSL)
Authentication: on
Username: your full IONOS email address
Password: that mailbox’s password
From email: the same IONOS mailbox
This sends the form emails through your real IONOS mailbox, exactly as if you had sent them from your email program, so they pass authentication and get delivered reliably. Both SMTP plugins have a “send a test email” feature. Use it to confirm delivery is working before testing the form again.
Once the test email arrives, your form notifications and user confirmations will use the same route automatically, no changes needed in the form settings apart from making sure the From address matches the IONOS mailbox.
When you say “from” address in the email settings of the form… what do you mean? I have no “from” but I have “Send To” as the email address where the notification about the contact form submission should go to. As below… and it’s my own Ionos domain email address.
“From” email address is going to be my client’s email address, as they are the ones submitting the form and I will have no control over their email address.
Is this what you mean? If yes, I’ll go and try the SMTP option.
I’m referring to the “Outgoing Email” settings in Superb Addons -> Settings -> Forms. If nothing is set there, the plugin uses your WordPress admin email address (Settings -> General -> Administration Email Address) as the sender.
To clarify the difference between the two settings:
“Send To” is the recipient, where the notification is delivered.
The “From” address is the sender the email claims to come from. Receiving mail servers check this address when deciding whether to accept or reject the email, which is why it matters for delivery even though it is not where the mail goes.
And yes, I would recommend setting up SMTP to ensure email is working correctly for your whole WordPress installation.
One tip: if emails still do not arrive after connecting SMTP, look for a “Force From Email” option in the SMTP plugin and enable it, with the From set to the same IONOS mailbox you authenticated with. IONOS may reject mail where the sender does not match the mailbox, and this option makes sure every email WordPress sends uses the right one. Then use the SMTP plugin’s test email feature to confirm.
