AOL Not Receiving Email

This sounds like an SPF problem. Please tell me the domain of the email address you are trying to send from?

Is it AOL? Is it a custom domain?

I’m not sure how to answer. I entered the AOL email in the Sender section of Postman. Is that what you are referring to?

In the form itself, I used an email I set up on the host.

I actually meant in your Contact Form 7 form settings. In the “From:” field of the Mail panel, make sure it looks like:

[your-name] <dt******[email protected]> (without the stars, of course)

If you use your visitor’s email address there, AOL may refuse to receive the e-mail. And Google. And Hotmail. And Yahoo. etc.

[I …] was able to capture the header of the rejected email

Let’s see the mail headers.. an SPF failure will show up there. By rejected, you don’t mean bounced do you? If so, what was the bounce error?

Maybe I need a basic explanation of the To: and From: fields in the Contact Form 7.

If the emails are to be sent to the aol address, then shouldn’t I put that address in the To: field?

And shouldn’t the From: email be the person filling out the form? My online search indicated that I should put an email associated with the domain name.

If I put [your-name] <***@aol.com> won’t that look like the email was sending from aol?

Try my contact form: https://programmer.jasonhendriks.com/contact/ A copy will go to you.

Simple Example

Here’s a really simple example that will work 100% of the time. You can get crazy after you get it working. Let’s use [email protected] for you (the website owner), and [email protected] for me (the visitor). You’ve configured Postman to send mail through smtp.aol.com.

The To: field should definitely be your address, [email protected]
The From: field should also be your address, [email protected]
The reply-to: header should by my address, [email protected]
The subject and body can be anything.

This case works because aol.com has an SPF record that says all mail with a From: header of @aol.com must come through smtp.aol.com. And you’ve configured Postman to send through smtp.aol.com.

If you tried to put my email in the From: field, this case fails because my domain is gmail.com, and gmail.com has an SPF record that says all mail with a From: header of @gmail.com must come through smtp.gmail.com. But you’ve set Postman to send through smtp.aol.com. AOL refuses the mail.

Little Bit More Advanced Example

Let’s say you want to use an email “associated with the domain name”. Let’s say that email is [email protected] and it’s setup with BlueHost. smith.com needs to have an MX server record pointed itself.. mail.smith.com. It needs an SPF record pointed to BlueHost and itself. Then Postman needs to be configured to send mail through mail.smith.com. And finally Contact Form 7 settings look like this:

The To: field would be [email protected]
The From: field would also be [email protected]
The reply-to: header would by my address, [email protected]
The subject and body can be anything.

Custom domains are a little harder to setup, but the email looks a little more professional.

So in Contact Form 7, To: and From: should be the AOL address and in Postman, the Sender should also be the aol address and leave the reply-to: blank? And then configure Postman to smtp.aol.com … does that go in the Outgoing Mail Server field?

Set the reply-to in Contact Form 7, under Additional Headers:

Reply-To: "[your-name]" <[your-email]>

Postman has a reply-to field as well but leave it blank. Run the wizard again and use smtp.aol.com as your hostname. Or, in manually configure:

Authentication: Plain
Security: SSL (SMTPS)
Outgoing Mail Server Hostname: smtp.aol.com
Outgoing Mail Server Port: 465

Then enter your AOL username/password under Authentication.

Hmm.. I have a feeling that Bluehost blocks access to outside SMTP servers, Cheryl ?? Can you run a Connectivity Test to smtp.aol.com and post the results here?

I figured out where to put the Reply-To: in the contact form just as you were replying. ??

Ok, so I have a small issue. I asked the client for the password and he said it was too vulgar to post… I’ll have to get it from him anyway to make this work.

Thank you SO much for your patience and your quick responses.

The test email failed.

Yah, I was afraid of that. There’s no way to reliably send mail with a From address of @aol.com on Bluehost because they block the port. You’ll have to use the custom-domain method I gave in my second example.

You have to setup a domain email with BlueHost.
https://my.bluehost.com/cgi/help/newemail

And you have to setup the email SPF record
https://www.mail-tester.com/spf/bluehost

Then run the Postman wizard to configure the new email address and SMTP server.
Outgoing Server: mail.westernoregonoutfitters.com

westernoregonoutfitters.com

I created [email protected]

Ok, good news is your MX and SPF records are already correct ??

westernoregonoutfitters.com. 14399 IN	MX	0 westernoregonoutfitters.com.
westernoregonoutfitters.com. 14399 IN	TXT	"v=spf1 a mx ptr include:rhostbh.com ?all"

So I don’t need to create an SPF record?

Nope, it’s already done. Just configure Postman and Contact Form 7 and test the contact form with different ‘pretend visitors’. aol.com, westernoregonoutfitters.com, gmail.com. Everything should work perfectly now.