I have several other posts on how to improve the reliability of email sent via wp_mail and how to troubleshoot your WordPress email settings. Most of these posts focus on sending email. A common follow-up problem is preventing email sent through wp_mail going to spam.
How can you optimize WordPress email settings so messages are less likely to be flagged as spam by the receiver?
How you set up WordPress email matters.
Review the email’s return path in the header. By default, WordPress does not create email headers. Most of the time this is a non-existent email address that matches your domain or your server. This might be based on your host – especially if you are on a shared host.
Optimize WordPress email with this
The code snippet below will prevent wp_mail going to spam. Add it to your functions.php file. This will change the email return path to match the “from” address:
| add_action( 'phpmailer_init', 'fix_my_email_return_path' ); | |
| function fix_my_email_return_path( $phpmailer ) { | |
| $phpmailer->Sender = $phpmailer->From; | |
| } |
When you match the return path to your “from” address, you reduce the likelihood of your messages going to spam. (Make sure your “from” address is a real address.)
So what’s going on here?
wp_mail relies on the phpmailer class. WordPress has an action hook in the phpmailer initialization (phpmailer_init). Use this action to make the “Sender” (return-path) the same as the “From” address.
If you configured WordPress to send email through an SMTP email server, this process is probably already done for you. This only applies to email from the web server’s email server.
If your WordPress site sends email to users, make sure you optimize email settings to reduce the likelihood of spam rejection. But don’t miss the links in the article above. There are other techniques discussed to help make your email more robust.
