Hi,
I’m having issues with using a Gmail account as the email recipient in Formit. Most emails are ending up in spam even if i use a hosted email account with a forwarder to the Gmail account.
I’ve tried QuickEmail which gives me a success message.
I’ve tried setting the MODx SMTP to the suggested settings:
SMTP username: Your Gmail address.
SMTP password: Your Gmail password.
SMTP server address: smtp.gmail.com.
Gmail SMTP port (TLS): 587.
SMTP port (SSL): 465.
SMTP TLS/SSL required: yes.
But nothing seems to work. I’m wondering if it’s actually possible to use a Gmail account?
Any help much appreciated.
Hi @9thwave,
At first glance everything looks correct. But I don’t see SMTP connection prefix, what do you use there? ssl /tls? As far as I remember, there are frequent connection problems in combination port/prefix values.
I rely on these recommendations:
Additionally how about “Third-party access option”, check it out just in case and try again please.
https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3466521?hl=en
QuickEmail can be also helpful for quick smtp settings test
You might need to enable this at the Google end with an app specific password.
I improved deliverability immensely when I switched to Mailgun. The cost is fairly trivial unless you send a whole lot of emails.
You have to set up the DKIM and SPF records at your server but Mailgun has good instructions on doing that.
The Notify extra will use Mailgun to send out messages to users in specific User Groups.
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Agreed, using Google for SMTP is not a very good idea. Mailgun is great, their is also Sendgrid which is free under 100 mails a day.
I just set this up last week and it’s working as expected. Using a Gmail address for the SMTP in the modx site, set to TLS and port 587. (Not sure why/ how you seem to be using both ports in your configuration?)
Also – IMPORTANT – have to set the Gmail account to allow "Iess secure " apps. They hate it when you do, but this Gmail address is only used to send mail from this modx site.
One last thing, your post mentions problems receiving mail to the Gmail address. Are you sending AND receiving the formit email from the same Gmail address? I’ve run into trouble doing that in the past. I send the formit email to a different address than the one that is configured as the smtp email.
Would someone that has this working be so kind to provide a dedicated subpage for gmail users for at https://docs.modx.com/current/en/building-sites/sending-mail? There’s already a section for Amazon SES and Mailtrap, but Gmail seems very common too.
Happy to help with putting it into the GitHub repository powering the docs if anyone finds that tricky.
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I’m happy to, but would need help with the format and process for adding to the github repo. (I would appreciate learning that anyway as then I might be helpful in the future.)
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The formatting is pretty simple, for example here’s the raw view for the mailtrap docs.
It’s probably possible to add it just from the GitHub UI from this link - enter lowercase gmail.md as filename at the top and enter the text with the page title block (called “frontmatter”) at the top. Then scroll down, commit the new file to a new branch. GitHub should walk you through creating a pull request for it from there.
There’s also more information about contributing to the documentation here, including a screencast I made a while ago that shows editing a page all from GitHub. If you’re confused about branches, commits and pull requests, that may help clarify that as it’ll show what it looks like.
I’m happy to help if you get stuck, just send me a DM here or #documentation on Slack.