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Why Aren’t My Website Enquiry Emails Reaching My Inbox?

A set of training tutorials, examples and how-to's for managing your WordPress website.

Table of Contents

1. How your website emails are sent

A typical setup works like this:

  1. A user fills in a form on your website (e.g. contact form, valuation form, free appraisal, etc.).
  2. WordPress passes that form entry to Post SMTP.
  3. Post SMTP connects to SendGrid (our email delivery service).
  4. SendGrid hands that email to your recipient mail server (usually managed by your IT company or email provider).
  5. Your mail server decides what to do with it:
    • Deliver to Inbox
    • Deliver to Junk/Spam
    • Quarantine it
    • Block it entirely

So there are three main places things can go wrong:

  1. The website/form itself
  2. Post SMTP / SendGrid
  3. Your email system / IT provider

When Post SMTP and SendGrid both show “success” or “delivered”, it means step 1 & 2 are working. The issue is almost always in step 3.

2. What “Success” in Post SMTP actually means

In Post SMTP, a “successful” status means:

  • WordPress successfully handed the email to Post SMTP.
  • Post SMTP successfully connected to the external mail service (SendGrid).
  • SendGrid accepted the email for delivery.

If there was a problem at this stage (e.g. SMTP authentication failure, wrong API key, DNS issue), you would see errors in the Post SMTP log, not “success”.

So, if Post SMTP shows the email as sent successfully, the email has left the website and is in SendGrid’s hands.

3. What “Delivered” in SendGrid means

In SendGrid, a status of “delivered” means:

  • SendGrid successfully handed the email to the recipient’s mail server.
  • The recipient’s server responded with a code that means:
    “Okay, I’ve accepted this message.”

From SendGrid’s perspective, the job is done. After that, your IT/mail system decides where the email goes:

  • Inbox
  • Junk/Spam
  • Quarantine
  • Or silently dropped/blocked

So when you see:

  • ✅ Post SMTP: Success
  • ✅ SendGrid: Delivered

…it is a very strong indication that the issue is inside the agency’s email system, not on the website.

4. The usual culprit: IT security blocking wordpress@yourdomain.com

Most agencies use an IT company or a managed email service. These systems often have:

  • Spam filters
  • Quarantine systems
  • Block lists / allow lists
  • Rules around “suspicious” senders

A very common pattern we see is:

  • The website sends from a generic address like wordpress@yourdomain.com.
  • The IT system decides this sender is suspicious or “spammy”.
  • All emails from that address are:
    • Marked as spam
    • Quarantined
    • Or outright blocked

Until the IT provider:

  • Unblocks that sender, and
  • Releases the quarantined emails

…you will not see the enquiries in your inbox, even though everything looks perfect in WordPress, Post SMTP and SendGrid.

5. How to troubleshoot – step by step

Step 1: Confirm the website and forms are working

Ask your web team to:

  1. Submit a test enquiry via your forms.
  2. Check Form Entries in WordPress
    • In most setups:
      WordPress → Forms → Entries
    • Confirm that the test submissions appear there.
    • If the entries are visible, the form itself is working.
  3. Check Post SMTP logs
    • Confirm the test email shows as successful.
  4. Check SendGrid activity
    • Confirm the email shows as “delivered” to the correct recipient address.

If all of the above are confirmed, the website is doing its job.

Step 2: Check your own mailbox (quick checks)

You or your team should:

  1. Check Inbox, Spam/Junk, and Other/Clutter folders.
  2. Search for:
    • The subject used on the form emails (e.g. “New Website Enquiry”)
    • The sender address (e.g. wordpress@yourdomain.com).
  3. If you find any:
    • Mark them as “Not Spam” / “Not Junk”.
    • Add the sender (e.g. wordpress@yourdomain.com) to your safe senders / allow list in your mail client.

If nothing shows up anywhere, move on to the IT provider.

Step 3: Involve your IT company (this is usually where the fix happens)

When Post SMTP and SendGrid both say success/delivered, your IT provider is the only one who can see what happened on the mail server.

Send them a clear request, for example:

“Our website sends enquiries via SendGrid using wordpress@ourdomain.com as the sender.
Post SMTP and SendGrid both show the messages as successfully delivered to our address, but we are not receiving them.

Please check on your mail server:

  • Are emails from wordpress@ourdomain.com being blocked, marked as spam, or quarantined?
  • If so, please release them and allow-list this sender so future website enquiries are delivered to our inbox.”

Specifically ask them to check:

  • Quarantine
  • Spam filters
  • Blocklists / deny rules
  • Any rules that might block emails sent “on behalf of” your domain via SendGrid

In many cases, they will find something like:

  • “The sender wordpress@yourdomain.com was marked as spam and quarantined.”
  • They then unblock the sender and release the queued emails.
  • New enquiries start arriving normally.

6. Optional checks & improvements

To reduce future problems, discuss these with your web team and IT provider:

  1. Use a clear, dedicated sender address
    • e.g. website@yourdomain.com or no-reply@yourdomain.com (instead of wordpress@…).
    • Make sure your IT provider knows this address is legitimate.
  2. Confirm SPF, DKIM and DMARC are correctly set up
    • Your DNS should explicitly allow SendGrid to send emails on behalf of your domain.
    • This improves deliverability and reduces the chance of being flagged as spam.
  3. Have a backup notification address
    • For example, send enquiries to both:
      • Your main office email (managed by IT), and
      • A secondary address (e.g. a generic cloud mailbox).
    • If one fails, you still get the enquiries in the other.
  4. Regularly review Form Entries in WordPress
    • Even if emails fail, the enquiries are often stored in WordPress.
    • This can help you recover any “missing” enquiries.

7. Summary: where the issue usually is

When you’re using Post SMTP + SendGrid and you see:

  • Post SMTP: ✅ Success
  • SendGrid: ✅ Delivered

…then:

  • The website is working.
  • The forms are working.
  • The email has left the website and has been accepted by your mail server.

If the message still isn’t visible in your inbox, the issue is almost always:

  • Your IT company’s email security:
    • Blocking or quarantining the sender (e.g. wordpress@yourdomain.com), or
    • Treating those messages as spam.

The fix is usually straightforward:

  1. Confirm via WordPress, Post SMTP and SendGrid that the email was sent and delivered.
  2. Ask your IT provider to unblock and allow-list the website sender address.
  3. Check any quarantined emails and release them.

Once that’s done, future website enquiries should arrive reliably in your inbox again.

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