Hi, thanks for the kind words! 💖
When neither the SMTP provider nor the WordPress fallback has any effect, it usually means Meow Mailer is not the one sending your email at all. Some mail plugins (WP Mail SMTP, Easy WP SMTP, Post SMTP, FluentSMTP, the official Mailgun one, and a few hosting mu-plugins) replace WordPress’s wp_mail function with their own. When that happens, WordPress never loads its own version, Meow Mailer is never called, and both your provider and your fallback are simply skipped. Nothing in the settings can change that.
There is an easy way to tell. Open the Logs tab in Meow Mailer and look for the emails you tried to send. If they are not listed at all, Meow Mailer never saw them, and another plugin is doing the sending. If they are listed with an error, then it really is a sending problem and the error tells us what it is.
So the first thing I would do is deactivate any other SMTP or mail plugin you have (just temporarily), then use the Send Test button in the Meow Mailer settings. There is also a Test Fallback button next to it, so you can check both routes separately. Both buttons show the exact error the server returned, rather than failing quietly.
Have a nice day! 😊
Jordy.
Thanks for your quick reply
I don’t have any other SMTP plugin at that website. Just to be sure I also disabled MailPoet.
In the logging I get at generic SMTP:
Sent by the fallback because the main provider failed: SMTP Error: Could not authenticate.
And with fallback test:
Sent! It works
But in neither case I received the emails…
Meanwhile I was able to make it work
Your plug-in seems not happy if I use another domain for mailing than the one from the URL
So I have setup another mail account (on same URL as the website) and now it is working
Glad you found it, and thanks for coming back to say what it was!
For the record, since your logs told the whole story: “SMTP Error: Could not authenticate” means your provider refused the login, and many mail hosts do exactly that when the From address is not a mailbox they host, even when the username and password are correct. Then the fallback said “Sent! It works” because your server accepted the message, but accepting is not delivering: with a From address on a domain the server is not authorized to send for, the message is dropped or filed as spam further down the line, silently. So both routes were failing for the same underlying reason, which is why moving to a mailbox on your own domain fixed the two at once.
The general rule worth keeping: the From address should be on the same domain as the site, and that domain should have SPF and DKIM records pointing at whoever sends for it. Everything else follows from that.
You also made me improve the plugin. A future version will warn when another plugin has taken over WordPress’s mail function, since that is invisible today, and I am looking at flagging a From address that does not match your site’s domain, which is exactly the case you ran into.
Thanks again, and have a great day! 😊
Jordy.
You are fabulous with this clear explanation!
You’re very welcome @mahyulan! I really want Meow Mailer to be perfect and simple 😌 Your feedback means a lot and really helps. If you feel like leaving a little review, that’d be awesome too! Thanks a lot 😊
