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I’m new to WordPress and don’t understand how sending emails work. I just thought I need to install Ninja Forms and that’s it. But when I preview it on my website, fill in the form and click send… I don’t get any emails in my Gmail inbox. I do have the admin email address entered into my wordpress settings…. but is there more do it than that?
Is there a native and free way to send emails or do I really need to install third party SMTP plugins and pay their monthly subscription cost?
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You can ask your host, but typically WP cannot send emails or send emails consistently enough without using a 3rd party email service.
You should be able to use the SMTP options for free (assuming you are already paying for an email service with SMTP).
We use the configure SMTP plugin ourselves. The set up is a bit complicated for something like Gmail, but once it’s set up, it works great.
You can setup an SMTP plugin to use your own mailbox or Gmail etc. to send emails, if your host doesn’t allow the default php mailer.
Another option good for the contact form in particular is to use an email logging plugin. This will log the email that is supposed to be sent even if it never gets there.
I use this one
This is good in general to debug email issues, but if you’re comfortable checking the log instead of your email, you can just run the contact form without email even working on your site.