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Fixing Email Delivery Issues: Order Notifications, Contact Forms, and Spam Problems

If your store has stopped receiving order notification emails, your contact form messages are being blocked, or your outgoing mail is landing in spam or bouncing back as undeliverable, this article will help you understand the most common causes and how to resolve them.

Common Symptoms

You may be experiencing an email delivery issue if you notice any of the following:

    • Order notifications stop arriving — new orders come in, but you don't get the confirmation email.
    • Order confirmation or notification emails bounce back as "undeliverable."
    • Contact form submissions are blocked or don't reach your inbox.
    • Your emails are going to spam at a high rate.
    • You see a warning that the sender address and "from" address don't match (a common cause of messages being flagged as suspicious).
    • You receive a bounce message containing an error such as:

"554 Message rejected: Sending paused for this account."
- "The connection to the outgoing (SMTP) server was dropped."Why This Happens

Most of these problems come down to email authentication — the behind-the-scenes settings that prove your email is legitimately coming from your domain. When these settings are missing or incorrect, mail providers like Outlook, Hotmail, and Gmail may reject your messages, mark them as spam, or block them entirely.

Two records matter most here:

    • DKIM is the DNS-based digital signature that proves a message genuinely came from your domain. When your DKIM record is missing or incorrect, mail sent from your domain isn't properly signed, and receiving mail servers treat the message as suspicious.
    • DMARC is the policy record that tells receiving mail servers what to do when that signature check fails — for example, whether to reject the message, send it to spam, or let it through.
Missing or incorrect DKIM or DMARC records are the most common cause of the bounce and spam symptoms described above. (An SPF record also plays a role in authentication, but SPF setup is covered in a separate article.)

The fix typically involves adding a small number of DNS records (such as CNAME, SPF, or DMARC records) at the company that hosts your domain's DNS — for example, GoDaddy or another registrar.

How to Get This Resolved

Because DNS records must match your specific domain, our support team will provide the exact records you need to add. Here's how to move forward:

    • Contact WSM Support and let us know which domain is affected.
    • Confirm where your DNS is hosted (for example, your domain registrar such as GoDaddy). This is where the records will need to be added.
    • We'll send you the exact records to add. These are the specific DNS records unique to your domain.
    • Add the records in your DNS host's control panel, exactly as provided — the host names and values must match precisely.
    • Let us know once they're added, and we'll confirm that email is authenticating and delivering correctly.
Important Notes
    • "Sending paused for this account" bounces indicate that mail sending has been temporarily paused. Please contact WSM Support so we can investigate and re-enable sending — this is not something you can fix by changing your own settings.
    • Enter DNS records exactly as provided. Even a small typo in a host name or value will prevent the fix from working.
    • DNS changes can take time to take effect. After adding the records, allow some time for them to propagate before assuming there is still a problem.
    • Sender/"from" address mismatch warnings are typically resolved by the same email authentication fix described above.
    • If your issue coincides with a known outage from your own email provider (for example, an Outlook outage), the problem may resolve on its own once that provider restores service. If it persists afterward, reach out to us.
Still Need Help?

If you're unsure where your DNS is hosted, or you'd like us to verify that your emails are sending correctly, contact WSM Support with your domain name and a description of what you're seeing (including any bounce messages). We'll walk you through the specific records your domain needs.