I’m using Mailgun and have a basic Fluent form on my site. What I want is to get an email notification whenever someone fills out and submits the form. I tried the WP Mail SMTP plugin thinking it would help, but all the options it shows need me to modify my domain’s DNS settings so WordPress can send emails from my domain. That’s not what I want to do. I’m not planning to send any emails from WordPress at all. I can’t modify my DMARC settings because they’re already configured for my actual email provider. Is there an easy plugin or way to get email alerts when forms are submitted? I just need to receive notifications, not send any emails from the site.
Had this exact problem last year - here’s what worked for me. Most form plugins (including Fluent Forms) can connect to third-party services like Formspree or Netlify Forms. They handle the email notifications for you. Just redirect your form submissions to their endpoint and they’ll send notifications from their servers. No WordPress email setup required. You can also use database logging plugins that save submissions directly to your WordPress database. Then either check them manually or set up external monitoring to ping your database and alert you when new entries show up. Both options skip WordPress email entirely but still get you the notifications you need.
Had the exact same issue with a client site where I couldn’t touch DNS settings. Easiest fix? Ditch WordPress forms entirely and use Typeform or Google Forms instead. Just embed them on your site - they handle email notifications automatically without any server setup. If you want to stick with Fluent Forms, I set up a simple cron job that watches the database table where submissions get stored. It checks for new entries every few minutes and sends alerts through a separate email service. Takes maybe 10 minutes to configure and completely sidesteps WordPress’s broken email system while still giving you real-time notifications.
you don’t even need outbound email settings! just set up a webhook in Fluent Forms to zapier or make.com, and they can handle the email alerts for you. way easier than dealing with smtp stuff.