Gravity Forms has an advantage over most form plugins when notifications go missing: it keeps every entry, and it can log exactly what happened when it tried to send the email. That turns guessing into a five-minute check.
For causes that apply to every form plugin, see Contact form not sending email? Why it happens and how to fix it.
1. Find the entry
Open Forms → Entries and select the form. If the entry is missing, check the Spam view as well. Gravity Forms does not send notifications for entries it marks as spam, so a real message flagged by the honeypot or an anti-spam add-on produces no email at all. Mark it as not spam and resend the notification from the entry.
2. Check the notification
Open the form’s Settings → Notifications and edit the notification you expect:
- It must be active, and its event should be Form is submitted.
- Send To: the right address, a field, or routing rules that actually match your entries.
- Conditional logic: if enabled, confirm the missing entries meet the conditions.
- From Email: an address on your own domain, not the visitor’s. Put the visitor’s Email field in Reply To. See why the From address matters.
3. Turn on logging and read what happened
Enable logging under Forms → Settings, submit a test entry, then open the Gravity Forms core log. Look for the lines about the notification:
- A line saying WordPress successfully passed the notification email to the sending server means Gravity Forms and WordPress worked. The email was lost later, at the mail server or in the recipient’s spam filtering. Go to step 5.
- A line saying the email could not be sent or that WordPress was unable to send it means WordPress itself failed. Go to step 4.
- No notification lines at all means the notification never ran: recheck step 2.
Turn logging off again when you are done. Logs can contain form data and grow quickly on busy sites.
4. When WordPress cannot send
By default WordPress sends through the server’s PHP mail function. Hosts often disable or rate-limit it, and the mail it sends has no SPF or DKIM for your domain. Request a password reset for a test user to confirm: if that fails too, every plugin on the site is affected.
The fix is an authenticated mail service. See how to fix WordPress not sending email or send Gravity Forms email through SecureSMTP.
5. Passed to the server, but never arrived
Check your SMTP or delivery log for a bounce, then the recipient’s provider:
With SecureSMTP every Gravity Forms notification appears in your delivery log as delivered or bounced, and you are emailed if a notification address does not exist.
Frequently asked questions
Can I resend a Gravity Forms notification?
Yes. Open the entry, find the Notifications box on the entry screen, tick the notification and click Resend. You can send it to a different address for testing.
Why do some Gravity Forms entries never send a notification?
Usually because the entry was marked as spam, or because conditional logic on the notification did not match that entry. Check the entry’s spam status and the notification’s conditions.
The log says the email was passed to the sending server, but nothing arrived. Now what?
Then Gravity Forms and WordPress did their part. The mail server or the recipient’s provider rejected or filtered it. Check your SMTP or delivery log for a bounce, and look in the recipient’s spam folder.