We have seen many WordPress sites having a problem not sending email notifications for things like form notifications as well as WooCommerce alerts. In fact, one of our most popular posts centered around the topic of Gravity Forms not sending an email notification. Today we will go through the process of setting up Mandrill, which is a service built by the same people at MailChimp, that powers your website’s email delivery. Instead of using your server to send email from your site (which is unreliable), Mandrill has a strong infrastructure that reliably delivers your notifications and alerts.

The first step is to create a new account at Mandrill. Accounts are free up to 2,000 emails, which should last you a long time unless you have a huge number of form submissions or orders coming in. If you do have a higher volume, it would make sense to upgrade to their paid plan to ensure you are receiving notifications.

After signing up, you will want to get an API key that you will later use to setup Mandrill on your WordPress site. Click “Get API Keys” at the bottom right corner of the first page after signing up.

Then click “+ Add API Key”

Now you have your API key that will be needed in a few steps. Keep this window open so you can copy your API key later.

Let’s go back to your WordPress site and install the official Mandrill plugin. Once logged into your site, click “Plugins”, then “Add New”. Search for “Mandrill”.

Be sure to choose the official plugin that looks like this:

After clicking “Install Now”, go ahead and activate the plugin.

After activating the plugin, click “Settings” to set your site up with the API key you got in the first half of this tutorial.

Go ahead and enter your API key in space provided and click Save Changes.

You should get an error message telling you that you haven’t set everything up. Go ahead and fill out the “Sender Settings”. You can leave the “Reply-To Email” blank as with the rest of the fields on this screen. Go ahead and click Save and then we will test things out!

After scrolling to the bottom of the screen, you will see the following test box. Enter your email and subject with a test message. Then click “Send Test”.

You should receive an email almost immediately to confirm the test went through. You will also see the following message at the top of the settings screen.

That’s it! This is a pretty straightforward way to ensure your email are going to come through when someone submits a form, buys a product or makes a comment on your site. Instead of relying on your server to deliver email (which often fails), you can have more peace of mind knowing the same system that powers MailChimp is also powering your site.

Let us know if you have any questions!