A few days ago I received a mail from a reader, notifying me that my contact form was not working. I use Contact Form 7 on my blog and I was very surprised by the fact that it was not working. It usually is just plug and play.
The error message I was getting was “Failed to send your message. Please try later or contact administrator by other way.”. A quick Googling and I came upon this post by Mario Vargas. I then realized that the error I was getting was because my mail settings were messed up. You can find my mail settings on the screenshot below:
Wrong config for Contact Form 7. Click on picture to enlarge.
As you can see, I was using the reader’s email address to send me emails. This was the wrong thing to do. Even if the mail would be sent, it would be flagged as spam. As a general rule, you should only send emails belonging to your domain from your domain. (send only @technoreply.com mails from www.technoreply.com).
So, I applied this formula. I changed the senders email to one that belongs to me. The screenshot below speaks for itself:
Good config for Contact Form 7. Click on picture to enlarge.
This simple little trick worked for me. It saved me a lot of time since I did not have to tweak my server.
April 14, 2010 at 8:21 pm
Sometimes you get lucky and this was one of them. Your fix had me up and going within minutes. Thanks very much!
May 7, 2010 at 4:18 pm
fixed it for me too thanks.
May 19, 2010 at 11:01 pm
Thanks Jevin!
I was stumped by this very problem and tried downloading both Cimy Swift SMTP and WP-Mail-SMTP based on advice posted on other forums. I am a relative novice at WordPress so most of this was greek to me. The above mentioned SMTP plugins did not fix my issue (undoubtedly because I wasn’t using them properly). Still, this tip did work and was relatively simply.
After following your explanation I was up and running in no time. FYI, I created my WordPress site through Yahoo Small business (specifically via the control panel). The email that I had to use was the email that I’d set the wordpress blog up under.
My website is http://www.airsoftreports.com. For illustration purposes my email is example@airsoftreports.com (Not really I just want to avoid spam). I had created that email address with Yahoo and that is the email address that is the default in my Word Press settings menu.
Hence, that is the email that allowed the contact form 7 to work. I tried putting in other email addresses but none worked.
I don’t know why, but happily things are working now. Thanks for the tip!
May 27, 2010 at 3:04 am
Thanks for this tip! I always use Contact Form 7 and just encountered this problem installing a site on a server which has already made me swear several times! Great tip – worked straight away, no plugins needed.
June 21, 2010 at 8:01 am
Hi Jevin,
Thanks for your kind help. I was looking for the solution for whole the day and at the end of the day I came across your article and found the perfect solution that works for me. Again thank you very much for your help.
Regards.
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July 11, 2010 at 9:25 am
i was also having a problem sending error with same error with red border.
can you assist me on how to setup. currently using wordpress 3.0 and this plugin.
correct me if im wrong? from what i understand the sender is ME right? but my Domain from where i install my wordpress doesnt have domain email. just using Yahoo n Gmail as my personal email.
How do i resolve this issue.
Thanks.
Really wanted to put a Leave Reply Message / Contact us. in my site.,
July 11, 2010 at 11:39 am
Hi John
You’ve got it right. The sender is you @ your domain. Even if you don’t have a domain email, this fix will work. Just use a fictitious email address in that case. Let me know if it works.
July 11, 2010 at 4:55 pm
Im using only subdomain to test my website hosted in awardspace.us., already tried different email Yahoo. Gmail and even i dont have email of awardspace.us i also did try making even though its not exsisting myemail.awardspace.us but still not resolve the problem. same Error with the red border
Failed to send your message. Please try later or contact administrator by other way.
Is there a way to troubleshoot this. i really need to have Contact form / feedback form in my site.
July 11, 2010 at 5:44 pm
by the way i have just read SMTP is disable in free account im just using a free account to test my website.
July 23, 2010 at 4:45 pm
Amazing! Thanks so much. I was scratching my head at this for a while. I wonder why it doesn’t say anything about this in the actual plugin FAQ?
August 2, 2010 at 8:56 pm
Pure Genius!! It worked. Just be sure that you capture and use the Tag for From.
August 12, 2010 at 1:24 pm
I have tried everything, it doesn’t work. Is there any other solution?
August 28, 2010 at 11:43 pm
Just thought I’d chime in.. but I had the same problem using a Contact form on the Boldy Theme, and my host.
When creating a new e-mail address I have a checkbox that says “(Check this box to set the new email as default “From” address for emails sent from scripts in your hosting account)”.
After creating a new address on my server with this option my contact box works great! : )
If you have this hosting option it should help you out.
August 31, 2010 at 4:18 am
Thanks a lot, was stuck with this in a client project and found this just in time
August 31, 2010 at 12:47 pm
Thanks a billion.
It worked like a charm.
My site hosting is yahoo.
Just to confirm that this worked also with yahoo hosting.
Thanks,
Riti
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October 26, 2010 at 11:09 am
This has ALWAYS been an issue, particularly with GoDaddy hosted stuff (as in my case this time).
Mr. Obvious did NOT manage to clock me upside the head to my dismay so … thank you for the screen shots!!! They pointed out the blindingly obvious error of my ways… != person filling out form’s email… dergh, 90 minutes down the drain followed by massive *face palm*.
November 2, 2010 at 4:41 am
Thank you for quick fix.
December 12, 2010 at 2:52 am
failed to send massages
December 13, 2010 at 8:11 pm
A friend of mine and me have described this specific topic. Your blog blog post help settled our argument. I’m going to continue reading much more posts! Thank you.
December 17, 2010 at 2:17 pm
Thanks for this! Was having problems with sending from Yahoo hosting (client’s choice) and the other documentation was complicated and didn’t work. The simplest solutions are the best. Thanks again!
December 22, 2010 at 10:58 am
Hi, you help me a lot,
On Form- Email
the problem that i had was
i type with [ ]
then on your image show without []
I delete it, and work
thanks.
November 14, 2011 at 10:39 pm
Hi everyone,
I m new using contact form on my site, hosting is with godaddy. I have error in my form. When i submit the form it says, Failed to send your message. Please try later or contact administrator by other way… But it works perfect in my local host. Please could you guide me in this.,,
Hope anyone help me!
December 22, 2010 at 11:09 am
work it
From:
nombre@dominio.com
Not work it with []
[nombre@dominio.com]
like your image
January 25, 2011 at 5:57 pm
This helped me out tremendously. I was having this issue for about 20 mins and came across your post. Thank you very much for this!
February 1, 2011 at 9:45 pm
this workS!
June 8, 2011 at 2:13 pm
Bluehost seems to have changed its email policies and CF7 suddenly started getting stuck when trying to submit forms. You just saved my day! THANKS A LOT for posting this solution.
July 24, 2011 at 12:35 am
I applied your suggestions and it worked! I wish it was always this easy to fix things when they don’t go according to plan. Thank you so much, now I can spend countless hours being frustrated with something else, at least this was fixed quickly!
August 30, 2011 at 9:11 am
Bahahahaha!!!
August 9, 2011 at 12:57 am
Hi,
I have tried all night to get this to work. I keep getting the same message. What is the typical problem in this circumstance. I never changed anything originally on the contact forms. After upgrading WordPress several updates ago, suddenly I was receiving this “Failed to send…” message.
Is there another resource, step-by-step for this somewhere?
Thanks!
August 12, 2011 at 3:57 pm
Finally!
It works! Thanks!
August 18, 2011 at 12:50 pm
Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you, a million times thank-you.
I’ve been going nuts trying to solve this and then set things up as you suggested — and badda-bing, I get the success message! (And an email in my in-basket too.)
August 30, 2011 at 9:10 am
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!
September 14, 2011 at 1:28 pm
Cheers, this works. I always forget about this! Thankfully, you’re the first Google result.
September 27, 2011 at 8:17 am
Wow, I was ready to start digging into the code and test different versions of the plugin but luckily did a quick Google search first. You saved me a lot of headache I can tell because your easy solution worked.
The site I’m working on is hosted on Yahoo and I’m sure that it’s a server security setting on their side. It’s not ideal because I’d rather have their email address as the sender but you gotta do what you gotta do.
Thanks for posting this.
November 14, 2011 at 11:39 pm
Hi everyone,
I m new using contact form on my site, hosting is with godaddy. I have error in my form. When i submit the form it says, Failed to send your message. Please try later or contact administrator by other way… But it works perfect in my local host. Please could you guide me in this.,,
Hope anyone help me!
December 16, 2011 at 4:07 pm
Damn it took me hours to figure it out, but it was just so simple!
Thank you very much!
December 29, 2011 at 1:08 pm
Awesome. Worked for me!
February 2, 2012 at 10:58 pm
You ROCK man