Email sent from your website explained
How your website sends automatic emails — form submissions, order confirmations, password resets — and what needs to be set up for them to work reliably.
- Difficulty
- Beginner
Your website sends email automatically in many situations — when a customer places an order, submits a contact form, or resets their password. These emails often go wrong without anyone realizing it. This guide explains how they work and what's needed to keep them reliable.
Quick summary
Your website sends automatic emails through a service called SMTP (or a dedicated transactional email service). If these emails aren't arriving, it's usually a configuration problem — not a problem with recipients' inboxes. Chykalophia sets this up when building your site, and can fix it if something breaks.
What kinds of email does my website send?
Most websites send several types of automatic email:
- Contact form notifications — an email to you when someone fills out your contact form
- Order confirmations — an email to customers after they place an order
- New order alerts — an email to you or your team when a new order comes in
- Password reset emails — a link for users to reset their password
- Account welcome emails — sent when someone creates an account
- Booking and appointment confirmations
- Shipping notifications (if you have an e-commerce store)
- Invoice and payment receipts
All of these are transactional emails — they're triggered by a specific action, and the recipient expects them.
How does a website send email?
When your website needs to send an email, it uses one of two methods:
Method 1: PHP mail / server's built-in mail function
The simplest method — the hosting server sends the email directly. This often works out of the box but has serious drawbacks:
- Low deliverability — emails frequently land in spam
- No DKIM signature of its own: the mail function doesn't sign messages, so unless the host has set signing up separately, your messages go out unsigned
- No visibility into whether emails are being delivered
We recommend avoiding this for any business-critical email.
Method 2: SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol)
SMTP connects your website to a proper email-sending service. Your website authenticates with the service (like using a username and password) and hands off the email to be delivered reliably.
This is the right approach. See What is SMTP? for a full explanation.
What is a transactional email service?
Transactional email services are specialized platforms built to send automated emails reliably and at scale. Popular options include:
| Service | Best for |
|---|---|
| Postmark | Reliability and speed for transactional email |
| SendGrid | High volume; check its pricing page for current plans and limits |
| Mailgun | Developer-focused; flexible |
| Amazon SES | High volume; more technical to set up |
| Your email platform's SMTP | Small sites sending low volume (Google Workspace, Microsoft 365) — both cap how much you can send, and Microsoft 365 may need authenticated SMTP switched on for the mailbox first |
These services provide:
- Authenticated email (DKIM signed)
- Delivery tracking and logs
- Bounce handling
- High deliverability
When Chykalophia builds your website, we configure one of these services so your automatic emails work reliably.
Why website emails often land in spam
If your contact form confirmation or order email is going to spam, the usual causes are:
- No SMTP configured — the site is using the server's basic mail function
- DKIM not set up — the emails are not signed, so spam filters are suspicious
- SPF record doesn't include the sending service — the service isn't authorized to send on behalf of your domain
- The email content looks like spam — generic subject lines, no address, etc.
Form emails going to your own spam
If your contact form notifications go to your own spam folder, the fix is usually on your end — add the sender address to your contacts or safelist. But if customer order confirmations go to their spam, that needs to be fixed at the server level.
What Chykalophia does to set this up
When we build or set up your website, we:
- Connect your site to a reputable SMTP service or transactional email provider
- Configure DKIM signing for emails sent from your site
- Add the sending service to your SPF record
- Test key emails (forms, orders, password resets) to confirm delivery
If you're having problems with emails from your website, let us know — this is something we can diagnose and fix quickly.
Common questions
I just launched a new site and my contact form emails aren't arriving. What should I do?
Check your spam folder first. If they're not even in spam, SMTP is likely not configured. Contact Chykalophia and we'll set it up.
My WooCommerce order confirmation emails stopped working. Why?
This usually happens after a plugin update, a hosting change, or if your SMTP credentials expired. WooCommerce records every transactional email it tries to send, so that's the place to start: go to WooCommerce → Status → Logs and open the log source named transactional-emails. Each entry says whether the email was sent, failed, disabled or skipped. If the entries you expect aren't there, check WooCommerce → Status → Logs → Settings to confirm logging is switched on. Contact Chykalophia if you need help diagnosing it.
Can I use my Google Workspace email as the SMTP server for my site?
Yes, for low-volume sites this works well. However, Google caps how many messages an account can send per day, so for high-volume stores a dedicated service is better. Microsoft 365 is similar, with one extra catch: authenticated SMTP is switched off for organizations created after January 2020, so an admin has to enable it on the mailbox before a website can use it.
What's the difference between website email and my personal inbox?
Your website sends automatic emails using server-side code. Your personal inbox (Gmail, Outlook) is separate. Changes to one don't affect the other — though they may share the same domain name and DNS records.
Related guides
- What is SMTP (and why your site needs it)?
- Transactional vs marketing email
- SPF, DKIM & DMARC for email senders
- Why your emails land in spam
- Troubleshooting email problems
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