Back in the 1990's, and early 2000's when a client had an issue with email, it could easily be figured out internally because as a company with a server, we could track what was going on in the backend on the website and on the server in general. As third party email services became the norm, more and more clients started separating their website from their hosting provider. In fact, we do the same thing. Whether it's using MS, Google, etc, people will have their email routed externally so it can be managed elsewhere. This is a great idea and helps keep email separate, thus, in theory, the email will always work and also won't slow down the server where your website is hosted. This is ideal for a company like ours that uses tremendous amounts of bandwidth to speed up websites, and anything we can do to keep something off the server, especially something as resource intensive as email, is a good thing... Except, when it isn't.

One of our biggest challenges with clients, is often due to email issues. It starts like this: We get an email from a client worried because they haven't received an email or email leads in a month. Our first question to ourselves is why it took a month to check. The next is to see if they checked their actual website form to see if they are receiving submissions. Half the time we check it and they say "I got your email." I then ask if they checked spam for other form emails, and half the time, they find the email in spam and then ask why our form is not sending it to their inbox... not understanding that we can't control what folder the email goes into, it's the email provider and them that control that. Then there is the emails that don't arrive. They will test the form, as will we, and I can see everything is working, but nonetheless, they don't get the email. I will set the form to send the submission to me and sure enough, I'll get it, so I will then revert the form back to going to them and they still don't get the email. Sometimes they are simply trying to solve the issue, sometimes it is simply frustration because they perceive that the website form is not working, when it has nothing to do with the form on the website.

The issue here isn't about a form, or the website, it's often about how your have your email security setup, whether you have updated DNS records to include SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records, and how you have your internal software configured. Even when all of those things are in place, the email provider can still end up blocking your email from your own form, from getting to you. I could write a long article about that alone, but essentially it's due to spam and security and ultimately, you need to learn to resolve this for yourself or expect to pay upwards of $1k to have a consultant figure it out for you.