Gravity Forms SMTP settings: how to send notifications through SMTP

Gravity Forms has no SMTP settings of its own. There is no host, port or password field in the plugin. It builds each notification and hands it to WordPress, and WordPress sends it with whatever mail setup the site has. So the work is in two places: connect the whole site to an SMTP service once, then set Send To, From Email and Reply To correctly on each notification.

How a Gravity Forms notification is sent

When someone submits a form, Gravity Forms reads the form’s notification settings, builds the email, and passes it to WordPress’s wp_mail() function. Gravity Forms’ own documentation says it does not handle email directly: from that point the email goes out through the web server’s mail function, or through an SMTP or third-party mail service if the site has one set up.

That is why SMTP is a site-wide setting. Every plugin that sends email through WordPress shares it: Gravity Forms, password resets, WooCommerce orders. The Gravity Forms side only decides what is sent and to whom.

Your options for SMTP on a Gravity Forms site

• Gravity SMTP. A separate plugin from Rocketgenius, the company behind Gravity Forms. It works without Gravity Forms installed and covers all email the site sends. You connect it to an email service through a setup wizard, or use its Custom SMTP option for any standard SMTP server. It has an email log, test emails and a backup connection. Their page says it is free with an active Elite, Nonprofit or Developer Gravity Forms licence and is not sold on its own, so check their site for the current terms.
• Gravity Forms add-ons for Mailgun, Postmark and SendGrid, listed in the Gravity Forms documentation.
• A general SMTP plugin or your email service’s own WordPress plugin. Anything that takes over WordPress email works for Gravity Forms too, because Gravity Forms sends through WordPress.

Pick one. Two mail plugins active at once can compete over who sends each email, and then it is hard to tell what actually happened to a message. If you already have one that is misbehaving, see WP Mail SMTP not working: common errors and fixes.

Step 1: set up SMTP for the whole site

1. Choose the service that will send your mail, and create an account.
2. Add your domain and verify it. The service gives you DNS records to add at your domain host, usually a DKIM record and an SPF entry. Until they are verified, many services will not send from your address. The records are explained in SPF vs DKIM vs DMARC.
3. Connect WordPress. Use the plugin the service recommends, or enter the SMTP details in your SMTP plugin:

4. Send the plugin’s test email to an address you can check. If this fails, fix it before touching Gravity Forms. See why wp_mail() stops working for the usual causes.

With SecureSMTP: install the WordPress plugin, paste your site’s API key, and turn on Route outgoing email through SecureSMTP under SecureSMTP → Settings. Gravity Forms notifications then go out from your own domain with DKIM signing, and each one appears in the email log with its delivery status. New accounts verify their domain by adding DNS records; until then they can send up to 10 test emails a day to their own address. The free plan has 5,000 emails a month, 1 site and 1 sending domain; see Gravity Forms with SecureSMTP and the WordPress plugin guide.

Step 2: set up each notification

Open the form, then Settings → Notifications. A new form has a default Admin Notification; click its name to edit it, or click Add New for another one. Check that the toggle in the list is on (green). These are the settings that decide whether the email arrives:

Merge tags

Fields that support merge tags show a {..} icon. Click it to pick a tag instead of typing it. The ones you will use most:

• {admin_email}: the address under Settings → General in WordPress.
• {Email:2}: a field merge tag. The word is a label and the number is the field’s ID, so the number in your form will differ. Use the picker so the ID is right. Multi-part fields such as Name use a dot, for example {Name (First):1.3}.
• {all_fields}: a table of every submitted value. {entry_id} and {entry_url} give the entry’s number and the link to it in wp-admin.

A typical contact form notification, for a form where field 2 is the Email field:

Event:       Form is submitted
Send To:     Enter Email → [email protected]
From Name:   Your Business
From Email:  [email protected]
Reply To:    {Email:2}
Subject:     New message from the website
Message:     {all_fields}

From Email must be on your own domain

The default Admin Notification is usually set up with {admin_email} as the From Email. That is fine only when the admin address is on the domain you send from. If it is a Gmail or Outlook address, your server is sending mail that claims to come from Gmail or Outlook, and the receiving server will not accept that as genuine. Replace it with a fixed address such as [email protected]. It does not need to be a real mailbox, but your SMTP service must be set up to send for that domain.

Do the same for a field merge tag: never put the visitor’s Email field in From Email. Put it in Reply To. The reasoning is in why your form must not send From the visitor’s email. Gravity Forms’ troubleshooting guide also advises against using the same address in both From and To, because many providers treat that as spam.

Routing

With Configure Routing under Send To, you add rules that pick the recipient from a form answer, for example sending to sales@ when a Department drop-down is “Sales”. Gravity Forms’ guidance is that at least one rule must match. If none match, there is no recipient and no notification is sent. Two things help:

• Make sure every answer the field can have is covered by a rule.
• Add a second notification to your own address with no routing, at least while you test, so a missed rule does not mean a lost lead.

Conditional logic

If Conditional Logic is on, the notification is skipped for any entry that does not meet the conditions. When one entry is missing an email and the others are fine, compare that entry’s answers to the conditions first.

Step 3: submit a test entry and read the result

1. Open the page with the form in a private window and submit it with an address you can check.
2. In wp-admin go to Forms → Entries, open the entry and scroll to Notes. Since Gravity Forms 2.4.15 this records what happened when it tried to send. The common results:

The SMTP rows are PHPMailer errors. PHPMailer is the library WordPress uses to send mail, and these messages can appear in the entry note when the failure happens at the SMTP stage. Gravity Forms’ documentation does not list every one of them.

3. If there is no note at all, go to Forms → Settings, set Logging to On and save, resubmit, then read the log from the Logging tab. Turn it off when done: logs can hold form data.
4. Check your SMTP service’s log. With SecureSMTP this is the email log, which shows delivered or bounced for each message.
5. To test again without a new submission, go to Forms → Entries, tick the entry, choose Resend Notifications from the bulk actions and click Apply. Tick the notification, enter your own address in Send To to override the recipient, and click Resend Notifications.

Checklist

• From Email is an address on a domain your SMTP service is set up to send for, not the visitor’s.
• Send To has no spaces or typos, and routing rules cover every answer the field can have.
• The notification toggle is on and its conditional logic matches the entry.
• Only one mail plugin is active.
• You tested the email, not only the form: a saved entry does not prove the email left the site.

Entries marked as spam are another reason for a missing notification; the Gravity Forms troubleshooting guide covers how to check. For problems that apply to every form plugin, see contact form not sending email.

Confirm it works

Submit a test entry from a Gmail address you can check. The entry note should say WordPress passed the email to the sending server, the message should be in your inbox and not in spam, and your SMTP log should show it as delivered. In Gmail, open the message, use the three-dot menu and choose Show original: SPF, DKIM and DMARC should each show PASS, and the From address should be on your domain. If the message lands in Gmail’s spam folder anyway, see contact form emails not reaching Gmail.

Frequently asked questions