One of the most common support requests we get from our users is about email delivery; aka “Why aren’t my emails getting delivered?”
This help article refers to “blocked” mail, but many of the same causes can result in mail being delivered but marked as “spam”, “dangerous”, “phishing”, or other warnings. Most mail delivery issues can be solved by following this guide, even if your issue is not outright blocked mail.
Our users often assume the source of the problem is caused by a bug with Matador Jobs. What they may not realize is the issue is often occurring with all email from their WordPress site, including email from Contact Us forms, Site Administrator emails, and more, and is unrelated to Matador Jobs and even WordPress.
In this help document, we will explore the problem and provide you with tools to assist you with fixing WordPress and Matador Jobs email deliverability issues. We will also explore alternative options.
First, A Primer on How Matador Jobs and WordPress Sends Email
So, why aren’t emails being delivered? There are actually a number of different possibilities. We will break them down for you by most common to least common, but before we begin, we need to establish two things: first, Matador Jobs doesn’t “send” email but rather passes it to WordPress to send on its behalf, and second, email travels a long path from sender to recipient, and at each point in that journey there may be a failure which needs to be explored.
Matador Jobs Hands Email to WordPress for Sending
Since Matador Jobs is a plugin for WordPress, we extend WordPress. That means we add our job board functionality to WordPress, sometimes by adding completely new code and sometimes by adding to and using existing WordPress code in fancy ways.
For example, a Job Posting is just a WordPress “post type”, sharing a lot of DNA with a blog post or a page, but all the code that imports the Job Posting data from the external sources like Bullhorn is our pure custom code.
When it comes to sending email, Matador Jobs actually uses WordPress to send the email. Matador Jobs prepares a message and hands it off to WordPress code to send. While that part can fail, especially when you’ve customized your emails, it usually isn’t the cause of email issues.
Mail Follows a Long Journey From WordPress to an Inbox
After Matador Jobs hands off an email message to WordPress, it begins a long journey.
WordPress detects which Mail processor is on your WebHost and engages it to send an email. The email then bounces around the internet going through several verifications, firewalls, spam/virus/ransomware filters, and more, ultimately arriving at the inbox of the recipient where it can be subject to sorting and rules.
And each of those points, there is a chance the mail can be stopped or blocked, and we observe that over 95% of email issues are caused after the mail leaves WordPress and well after Matador Jobs has done its part.
But rest assured, it can be fixed!
Why Emails Aren’t Being Delivered from WordPress and Matador Jobs
The following are the most likely reasons mail is not delivered. They are listed from most common to least common:
- The mail is blocked by various filters, firewalls, or security systems around the internet, which can be fixed by DNS-level mail security settings.
- The mail triggers Spam filters due to excessive marketing speak or deceptive code in the email template, and is blocked, which can be fixed by sending only no-nonsense, simple email content.
- The mail fails to send out of your web hosting provider due to the lack of a mail sending system or your web hosting provider disallowing mail.
- The mail fails to send out of WordPress due to an improperly set up mail handler plugin, which can be fixed by reviewing your settings for the plugin.
- The mail fails to be passed to WordPress from Matador Jobs due to bugs caused by custom code in your theme or plugins, especially customizations to your email templates or Matador Jobs’ mail handling functions, which can be fixed by resolving those issues.
- The Matador Jobs mail settings aren’t set up properly.
Let’s dive deeper into each of these.
Your Email is Blocked by Mail Security Systems
The most common reason mail is not delivered is that it is being blocked by the security systems around the internet.
This is especially true when the email is both “from” and “to” the same domain, for example, when it is “from” info@example.com and “to” john.smith@example.com and the mail is “spoofed”.
Mail that comes from outside your mail system but appears to be “from” your domain, if not properly signed, is deemed dangerous by most mail systems, and since Matador Jobs sends recruiters confirmation of applications and those recruiters usually have an email address at your domain, this is common.
Mail sent from WordPress is perceived as “spoofed” because it originates from outside the official mail server of the website.
Spoofed email can be compared to sending a postcard while on vacation or holiday. Say you are visiting a faraway place and mail a postcard from there, you may use your home address as the return address even though you’re not physically sending it from home post office. Spoofed email is a lot like that, it says it’s “from” you, but it comes from a different place than the designated system that handles most of your email.
Spoofed email, however, is where most dangerous email originates. Imagine receiving an email “from” your boss instructing you download an attachment. Because it is “from” your boss, you may open the attachment and install a virus or ransomware.
Even though mail from your website is legitimate, spoofed mail in general is now so dangerous that most mail service providers block it automatically, especially when it is being delivered to someone at your domain “from” your domain but originating outside your mail system.
Spoofed mail, historically, has not been outright blocked, but since Summer 2021, spoofed mail to a domain from the same domain is very commonly completely blocked. Spoofed mail to other domains may be delivered, but more likely to be filtered as spam or marked as “dangerous.”
Since Summer 2021, mail service providers including Google Suite and Microsoft Exchange have greatly increased email security. This is largely driven by pressure from Governments following the May 2021 Colonial Pipeline Company ransomeware attack. Read our blog post about this.
Robust infrastructure has been in place for years to protect us from spoofed mail, but it was not widely implemented for many years, in part because it isn’t intuitive for the average website operator to set up. Now, out of necessity, they are being required. These infrastructure items include:
- SPF or Sender Policy Framework, which allows a domain manager to designate which sites and services are allowed to send mail “as” the domain.
- DKIM or DomainKeys Identified Mail, which digitally signs email sent from sites authorized to send mail “as” your domain.
- DMARC or Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance, when used in addition to SPF and DKIM, adds reporting and further protections to the above.
In an effort to quickly make email more secure, many mail providers implemented mail blocking without giving much warning. Many small businesses, their leadership, and their web developers were unaware of the change or the immediate need to upgrade their mail security. This resulted in mail not being delivered.
The makers of Matador Jobs were not immune to these struggles. Our SPF/DKIM records were not up to par when our mail provider started strictly enforcing the security rules. Luckily, we had redundancy built in that ensured we didn’t miss any support emails.
Nearly all email support tickets since last summer have been resolved by setting up SPF/DKIM and optionally DMARC infrastructure, but there are a few more things that could impacting your mail.
Blocked by Spam/Virus Filters
If a mail message clears the mail security infrastructure, it can still be blocked by proprietary anti-spam or anti-virus systems on your recipients’ mail provider. This is rare, especially because email validated by SPF/DKIM is less likely to hit the spam filter ever, but we’ve seen some users who customize the Matador Jobs emails to appear very “spammy” or send several attachments, resulting in the messages being blocked.
WordPress Lacks Email Sending Ability
While most “WordPress” web hosting providers give you everything you need to run WordPress, on rare occasion we see a user with a highly customized web host that lacks basic mail sending systems, including PHP mail().
WordPress Mail Relay Plugin Improperly Set Up
In the event you use a WordPress Mail Relay plugin to send mail through a relay service or through your a mail provider instead of sending it programmatically (WordPress default) you need to make sure it is properly set up. Most of these plugins have a “test email” function to determine if this is satisfied.
Errors in Customizations to Matador Jobs Email, or Matador Itself
It is not common, but we have seen users or users’ developers create customizations to their Matador Jobs emails via developer filters or templates that have bugs, and these emails don’t send because of the bugs.
Matador Jobs Email Settings Not Properly Configured
Finally, we’ve occasionally run into users who tell us mail is not being delivered, but have the setting to send mail turned off or have related settings not configured properly.
Troubleshooting and Fixing the Causes of Email Not Being Delivered
Okay, we have covered the most common reasons emails aren’t delivered by Matador Jobs or WordPress. How will you know which one is behind your issue? Follow these steps to narrow it down:
Double Check Your Matador Jobs Settings
Double check that your email settings are properly entered in Matador Jobs. In WordPress Admin, go to Matador Jobs > Settings and access the General tab for some email settings and the Applications tab for application email settings (Pro and All-Access Subscribers). Make sure that:
- Your “from” address is valid.
- You select recipients from fields you’re using in your external source. For example, if you expect the email to go to Recruiter A but it is going to Recruiter B because you’ve selected “Job Owner” instead of “Job Published Contact Recruiter”.
When in doubt, you can set up a backup email address for emails that don’t find a recipient in the job record and you can also set additional recipients (ie: carbon copy).
Check the WP Site Health Tool for Missing PHP Mail Module, Other Issues
Since WordPress 5.5, the WP Site Health tool can help identify issues with your WordPress site. Not all issues are critical, but it should be a goal to always have all critical issues resolved before a website is “live” for users.
Go to WordPress Admin and access Tools > Site Health. Review your report, taking note that if you’re seeing a “missing PHP extensions” alert, this may be a cause, and you should consult with your web host or system administrator to resolve these issues.
Install a Mail Debugger Plugin
The next step is to determine if mail is sending from WordPress. This will ensure the mail isn’t failing due to a bug on your site or in your Matador Jobs customizations, or mail() being disabled.
We recommend WP Mail Debugger. It is a free plugin and super easy to use. Install it from the WordPress plugin repo, perform an action that should send an email, and then in the WordPress Admin go to Tools > WP Mail Debugger.
If the email was successfully passed from Matador into WordPress and successfully sent, it will show up in your testing plugin, and you can determine that the mail, if not received into your inbox, was blocked after it left WordPress (likely by mail security infrastructure or spam blockers).
If the email is not successfully sent, you should review PHP error logs and server configuration to determine that mail() is enabled and there isn’t an error blocking mail. In the event of a PHP error log implicating Matador Jobs, submit a support ticket.
If Using a WordPress Mail Relay Plugin, Use the “Test” Feature
There are many WordPress Mail Relay Plugins, including the ever-popular WP SMTP Mail, check its settings for a “test” feature. These plugins will report if they are successfully completing their task, and if not, will tell you why and how to fix errors they’re encountering.
Fixing Blocked Mail
Ultimately, unless the troubleshooting processes identified an issue with your web host, site code, or mail relay plugin, which is unlikely in 95% of our support tickets related to email in the last year, you should assume your mail is being blocked.
This is, once again, due to missing mail security infrastructure between your site and mail provider, and requires you either SPF and DKIM records on your Domain Name Service (DNS) or avoid the issue by using a WordPress plugin to relay mail through an external trusted system.
You have two options to fix this:
- Easy Option: use a WordPress plugin to relay mail through a mail sending like SendGrid or SMTP via your mail provider. More web hosts recommend WP Mail SMTP than any other plugin, though we encourage you to explore the options right for you. Follow instructions on the plugin for setup.
- Harder Option: Set up SPF, DKIM, and optionally DMARC records on your DNS. To do this effectively, we recommend you start with help docs from your provider (here are those for Google Suite and Exchange). Those help docs will only teach you how to set up SPF and DKIM records for your mail provider, and you will need to add your website and other allowed senders to those SPF and DKIM records.
For more help on this, this regularly updated blog post by WP Beginner explains all of the “how-to’s” to resolve blocked mail issues.
Further Avoiding the Issue Through Redundancy
It is also possible to avoid the negative impacts of this issue through alternate or redundant systems. Try using email addresses outside of your domain to increase deliverability changes, consider Matador Jobs All-Access Notifications Extensions, try 3rd Party Bullhorn Marketplace solutions, or have a developer make your own.
Use a Generic Email Address for Matador Admin Emails
For the administrator email address set in the Matador Jobs > Settings > General tab, we recommend using a general email address like you get for free from Google, Apple, Yahoo, or your ISP.
Matador Jobs will send emails to admins when things are going wrong and require user intervention. This includes, for example, when the site disconnects and the automatic reconnection routine cannot recover.
Using an email address like john.smith@gmail.com will give you a much greater chance of your mail being delivered. This can help ensure critical admin notices get to someone much more likely to receive it.
Email security is a hot topic, and it is very likely that more actions will be taken by mail providers in the future. This shouldn’t be a solution, just a stop-gap while you otherwise set up proper mail validation and security for your site.
Install Teams, Slack Extensions
Subscribers to Matador Jobs Pro All Access can download the MS Teams Notifications and/or Slack Notifications extensions to trigger messages into the team workspaces when new applications are received.
Explore Other Bullhorn Systems
Various first-party and third-party Bullhorn systems can send notifications via apps, emails, and even text messages. Consult your Bullhorn support team or review apps in the Bullhorn Marketplace Communicate and Track category.
Do Something Custom
Matador Jobs Pro has hundreds of developer hooks to build something custom. Possibilities can include leveraging Twilio to send SMS or WhatsApp notifications when applications come in, adding “Review Application #12345” type entries to a to-do list app when an application comes in, or more.
Have a great idea? Let us know, and we might even “sponsor” it or make it for you!
Final Thoughts
We hope this helped explain the reasons behind email delivery issues and provided workable solutions to fix them.
We know email delivery issues are a huge pain and while we hope you don’t think we’ve blamed external systems and washed our hands of them; we do hope you can see that despite the struggles they create, most email issues our users encounter are rooted in processes designed to protect from spam, phishing, viruses, and ransomware.
We realize this Help doc is more robust than most and the amount of information we have provided here may be a little overwhelming. If you would like help troubleshooting, we can help you figure this out. Our team can be hired at our extended support hourly rate to troubleshoot and potentially fix your mail issues. Issue a support ticket to get started.