Quick Notification Options for WordPress forms

Jay D

Does anyone have any recommendations for a WordPress form that notifies you immediately after a submission is made?

I ran into problems with Woocommerce recently and decided to simply have a menu and phone/email order for a local business. However, we are trying to eliminate back and forth so a short form would help with this. The forms I have tried are taking a long time to notify you that an entry is made. Generally in the region of 40 mins to one hour.

Has anyone experience using a form or alternative solution that will notify the admin immediately? As is, the time it takes for the notification to come through, the customer would have already been and gone, unhappily...

daymobrew

WooCommerce should be sending you an email about a new order immediately. I wrote code to *delay* the sending of some emails because they are being sent too quickly!

Other form plugins should also work the same - sending emails immediately. Contact Form 7, Ninja Forms, WP Forms, Gravity Forms all would send immediately.

A 40-60 min wait sounds like the site might be using the host's mail server and maybe the delay is there. Using an external mail service via SMTP might help. (I wrote a tiny plugin to send emails by SMTP instead if installing a larger plugin).

If WooCommerce was working well apart from emails I suggest investigating that.
There are plugins that will log emails sent so you can see *when* the email was sent vs when it was received. (I have a small one that writes the data to debug.log or server's error_log).

Jay D

Hey, thanks for the reply dude.

The email wait is also a thing and I was onto Blacknight who told me that the problem is with Gmail or whatever service you decide to use for receiving your own domain name emails. However, I set the forms to email a normal Gmail address instead.

I had tried WP Forms and some others but that delay remained even to x@gmail.com. I guess there are some more I can try but the more I am thinking of it, logistically, I am probably better getting a menu ordering function as opposed to a form. I know a lot of popular ones such as Flipdish charge commission but I am wondering is there any good ones that offer simple click and collect and are worth investing a one-off fee in? I'd been looking at Pronto Food Online.

Impressive little plugin there, nice work. Is that configured through FTP? I really appreciate your advice on this as the email thing for own domain has been a pain for me for years now.

daymobrew

An email logging plugin will show you when the emails were sent. I expect this to be the time you expect.
Then look at when the email was received.
My email logging one does not require any configuration (apart from setting WP_DEBUG to true - and you can limit that to your IP).
The SMTP one does need some config, specific to your email account.
Here's the settings for Blacknight:
[php]
add_action( 'phpmailer_init', 'send_smtp_email' );
function send_smtp_email( $phpmailer ) {
$phpmailer->isSMTP();
$phpmailer->Host = 'smtp1r.cp.blacknight.com';
$phpmailer->SMTPAuth = true;
$phpmailer->Port = 587;
$phpmailer->Username = 'me@domain.com';
$phpmailer->Password = 'pAsSwOrD';
$phpmailer->SMTPSecure = 'tls';
$phpmailer->From = 'me@domain.com';
$phpmailer->FromName = 'WordPress Multisite';
}
[/php]

I use Blacknight for my hosting. I have a Gmail account that pulls my domain emails in (POP3/SMTP). Gmail checks the Blacknight mail server about once an hour so I don't get emails for up to an hour. This is a Gmail thing (and it's not a bug). I use Blacknight webmail (or force Gmail pull) if I want to check an incoming email urgently.

Graham

It might be worth installing a plugin like this: https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/post-smtp/

It keeps a log of all email transactions, that might give you a clue whether the issue is on your side or your ISP/email provider.

FionMc

Sounds like the delay with with your hosting company or maybe with your outlook or other email client settings. Check to see what the frequency is for checking for new mails in your email client and then ask your hosts what the situation is with them. If you use an Exchange server the settings in there might need to be configured. Bit of a needle in a haystack based on info provided