[SOLVED] Gravity Forms Notifications not being received on Google Workspace but are received everywhere else

Gravity Forms Notifications not being received on Google Workspace but are received everywhere else

I have set up gravity forms on my WordPress website and I do get e-mail notifications once someone fills the form. However, I am not being able to receive e-mails on one specific domain email addresses hosted on Google Work space. I have reviewed the workspace safety and privacy settings as well and didn't find anything out of place.

It is my good guess that this is a Google Workspace related issue and not a WordPress one. I would appreciate support from the community.

I have tried following tutorials on setting up Gravity Form notifications. I have also tried fiddling with Google Workspace safety settings.

Solution

First, if the site is sending using a Google Workspace account, make sure it's connected to your Google account. You can use the WP SMTP plugin to do this or Gravity Forms now has a similar plugin, which I haven't used yet. This connects sending of emails from your WordPress site to your Google account. Otherwise, Google sees it as spam and will often block it. Once the plugin is installed, go to settings, select Google and follow the plugin instructions.

Once that's done the sending will often work to other email addresses but not yours. This is a result of security settings inside of Google. The quickest way to fix is usually to add DKIM and DMARC records for your Google Workspace. You can get a full set of instructions here but you will need access to an administrator account for Google Workspace and the DNS (domain registration settings) for the domain.

You need to use the Google Workspace account to get a record to add to the DNS. Once that's added you go back to Google Workspace and validate it (it can take a few hours to show up). Google recommends waiting 48 hours after the DKIM to add the DMARC record to your domain.

For DMARC add a TXT record of _dmarc.yourdomain.com with a value of v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:dmarc-reports@yourdomain.com (you can customize the email address and with some research you may find other values for the rua which instructs the system on what to do).

Basically, DKIM validates that the email was sent from your account. It sort of signs the email. An email from address can say anything you want it to and without this protection, someone can spoof your email address. These instructions protect against that. Without it, Google will usually filter the email out (not even adding it to spam.)