Email delivery | JormunTL docs

Why WordPress email fails silently, how to set up a sender inboxes trust, and how to prove it works before your readers depend on it.

WordPress cannot reliably send email on its own. Its built-in mailer sends directly from your web server, which has no sending reputation, so Gmail and Outlook routinely drop those messages or file them as spam. This is a WordPress and hosting matter rather than a theme one, and it affects every WordPress site.

It matters here because several things the theme does depend on email arriving:

Message	When it is sent
Purchase receipt	A reader buys coins
Password reset	A reader uses “Forgot your password?”
Verification link	A new reader signs up, if verification is on
Account deletion warning	A reader schedules deletion, 30 days ahead
Contact form	A visitor uses the About page form
DMCA notice and receipt	A takedown request is filed

The first two matter most. A reader who pays and receives no receipt tends to open a support ticket or a chargeback, and a reader who cannot reset a password is locked out permanently. Both happen on a default install, whether or not email verification is ever switched on.

The Email Delivery row with its Send test email button, and the verification switch beneath it

Both live in JormunTL ▸ Theme Options ▸ Accounts and Readers, and they sit next to each other on purpose: the switch below is the one that must wait for the button above to succeed.

Setting it up

1. Install an SMTP plugin. It intercepts every email WordPress sends and routes it somewhere that inboxes trust. The theme needs no configuration for this and no theme setting points at it.

FluentSMTP is free, has no upsells, and connects to every service below.
WP Mail SMTP is the better-known alternative and works equally well.

2. Point it at a sending service, not a personal mailbox. Connecting the plugin to your own Gmail account works briefly and then gets throttled. A transactional service is built for this and free tiers cover a small site:

Service	Free tier	Notes
Brevo	300 a day	Easiest signup, no card required
Postmark	100 a month	Best deliverability, transactional only
Mailgun	Trial, then paid	Reliable, developer-friendly
Amazon SES	3,000 a month	Cheapest at volume, fiddlier setup

3. Add the SPF and DKIM records. The service will give you two or three DNS records to add at your domain registrar. They are what proves the mail is genuinely from your domain, and skipping them is the usual reason messages still land in spam after everything else is right.

4. Confirm it works. Theme Options, Accounts and Readers, Email Delivery has a Send test email button. It sends to your admin address and records the result, which is what ticks the matching item off the setup checklist in Get Started.

A warning about local development

On Laragon, XAMPP, LocalWP and similar, outgoing mail is usually caught by a local trap such as Mailpit or MailHog. The test will report success and nothing will ever leave your machine. That result means the site tried, not that anybody received it. Test delivery on the real host before relying on it.

Turning on email verification

Leave Require Email Verification off until Email Delivery reports a successful test. With it on and mail broken, new readers are flagged unverified, never receive a link, and cannot buy anything. Existing accounts and staff are unaffected either way, which is why this is easy to miss until a stranger complains.