I’ve been testing and authenticated WP Mail SMTP (after some client reports of contact emails not being received, which is a different problem), and every test I send, regardless of email, has missing images (plugin logo, etc.) I’ve run through all the Mac settings, but it also happens in browser-based GMail. What might be the issue?
Looks like your uploads directory is not publically accessible, since we are getting the “403 Permission Denied” error when trying to open an image (please, look at the screenshot). And the same result is if we try to open an image from the WP Mail SMTP plugin. That’s why the email client is not able to load images.
You need to allow static files like images to load on the server level. You can reach out to your hosting provider support with this, they’d hopefully be able to help.
My apologies. I don’t know where my head was at. (Too much troubleshooting SPF, DKIM, DMARC and SMTP in one day, I think! :D) Here is an example of how the emails appear. I hope this demonstrates the issue. WP Mail SMTP email missing images
This reply was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by jrotem.
Such an issue occurs because images that are included in the email are not publicly accessible. Looks like your web server is denying jpeg and png images loading. The restriction rules could be applied on the web server level or by some plugin via the .htaccess file.
Please disregard the image link in my first post — my error.
I have disabled all plugins and tested one by one and the issues remains.
Also, when I test to both hosted and gmail accounts I get the same block image issue. If it were server level why would it be happening on both mail servers? Could it be related to WP Mail SMTP?
I’m just trying to figure this out. Thanks for your help!
No, this issue can’t be related to the WP Mail SMTP plugin, since images are not accessible via browser either. Something is blocking images loading and any email client (Gmail or hosted) can’t load images, since the web server returns a 403 Permission Denied response.
You can try to check the .htaccess file in the WordPress root directory and reset it to the default state (make sure to backup the old .htaccess file for revert). After resetting, check if the issue persists. Try to open this image in the browser and see if it’s loading.
