I am not receiving emails sent from my contact form, how do I fix it?

If you aren't receiving emails from the contact form there are a few things to check to get it working.

Please note, if you are using the new Contact Forms Enhanced Add-on in EverWeb 3.0, you can manage all form submissions from your client area.

1. Make sure you have published your website, the contact form won't work when Previewed

EverWeb's contact form will not work when using the Preview feature. You must publish to an EverWeb Hosting account or to your web hosting provider.

2. Ensure with your web host that you have PHP 5.6 or later installed

Ensure your server has PHP 5.6 or later installed. Please contact your web hosting provider to confirm the version of PHP you are using. For EverWeb + Hosting customers you can be sure the Contact Forms are compatible with all our servers so you can skip this step.

3. Make sure you have entered a proper email address in the contact form widget

With the contact form selected select the 'Widget Options' tab (last tab) in the Inspector and make sure your email is entered properly in the email field.

4. Try a different email address

If for some reason emails aren't coming through, try another email address to see if your current email address is blocking your contact form's email.

5. Is the email of the form sender a free email address such as; aol, yahoo or hotmail?

Recent changes to aol, yahoo and hotmail email services, as well as other free email addresses, may prevent emails from any contact form going through to the intended recepient. EverWeb 1.8 has a work around for this issue so make sure you are using EverWeb 1.8 or later. However, if you have problems with other free email accounts, please let us know.

6. Use the new 'EverWeb API' sending option in EverWeb 3.8 or later

This option requires the Contact Forms Enhanced Add-on but will make everything work out of the box. The Contact Forms Enhanced Add-on also includes file uploads, a date and time picker, confirmation emails sent to your visitors, managing form submissions from your client area and mass, personalized emails sent to your customers.


7. Check with your web hosting provider

If you aren't using EverWeb + Hosting then check with your current web hosting provider to see if they are blocking form submissions. Some web hosting providers block forms that send emails to prevent spamming.

8. Use your own SMTP settings with the Contact Form Advanced

Using your own SMTP settings will improve the chances that you receive emails sent through the contact form. This option is available in the Contact Form Advanced widget in EverWeb 2.1 and later. See these instructions for entering your own SMTP settings.

9. Check your SPAM/Junk folder

Some of your form submissions may have went to your SPAM folder. Check that folder to make sure to mark these emails as not SPAM so you will receive them to your inbox in the future.

10. Other Issues - Finding the problem

If you continue to have issues there could be a misconfigration, improper SMTP details, your web hosting provider may not support it or other issues. Here is how you can find the error message with more details about the problem.

You may get an error that says 'Please check the developer console'. If you get this error you should confirm that PHP 5.6 or later is installed on your server. Please confirm with your web hosting provider. 

  1. Open your website in Safari and navigate to the page with the contact form
  2. Right click on the page and select 'Inspect Element' You will see a new window open up
  3. In this new window (or section that appears), click the 'Resources' tab
  4. On the left you should see a button called 'All Resources'. Make sure it is selected
  5. Now you will see a list of imporant files on your website
  6. Fill out your form and click Submit
  7. You will know see a new file listed under All Resources called ew_contactform-##.php
  8. Select that and you should see some messages in the field on the right
  9. The error messages in there could give you an indication of the issue such as incorrect SMTP details, unsupport frameworks etc..
  10. If you cannot solve the issue with these messages, please contact us
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