Making sure emails arrive

Why messages land in spam, and the settings that fix it.

Booked writes your confirmations; WordPress sends them. That hand-off is where messages go missing, and the settings that control it sit under Settings › Emails & texts.

How your site sends email

Out of the box, mail goes out by WordPress mail: Booked hands each message to WordPress, which posts it out from your web server without signing in to any mailbox. To Gmail or Outlook that looks like a message claiming to be from your pharmacy with nothing to back the claim up, so plenty of it is filed as junk and some is dropped with no bounce. Either way, nothing appears in your admin.

The alternatives are to sign in to Google Workspace or Gmail or Microsoft 365 or Outlook once, with nothing to configure, or SMTP. Your site signs in to a mailbox you already own — Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, or one at your hosting company — and sends through it, as if a member of staff had typed the email. If the Google or Microsoft choice shows Not yet, it is not available on your site yet; use SMTP for now.

• Booked's emails are HTML only, with no plain-text version, which some strict filters mark down.
• There is no separate reply-to address: replies to your customers’ emails go to whatever is in From email. Alerts to your team are the one exception — a reply to one goes to the customer.
• These settings apply to all mail from your site, not only Booked's.

Set the name and address customers see

• 1Emails & texts — under Reminders & calendar in the settings rail. Everything about how mail leaves your site sits here.
• 2How mail leaves — WordPress mail hands the message to your web host; Google Workspace or Gmail and Microsoft 365 or Outlook sign in once and send through that account; SMTP sends through any mailbox you own.
• 3From name — the sender name customers see, taken at first from your company name on Settings › Company details.
• 4From email — the address mail is sent as, and where every reply lands. Use one on your own domain that somebody monitors.
• 5Send a test — sends a real email the way your customers’ confirmations go. Press Save first; the test uses the saved settings.

Both fields are filled in from Settings › Company details. If you never completed that tab they fall back to your WordPress site name and admin email — which is how confirmations end up arriving from "My WordPress Site".

Two similar fields do different jobs. The Email on Settings › Company details is your public contact address, available in any template as the merge tag {company_email}. From email here is who the message is sent as. They start identical and drift apart the moment you edit one.

Send through your own mailbox

Have the mailbox you want to send from, and its login, to hand before you start.

1. Choose SMTPThe SMTP fields only appear once you choose it. With Google Workspace, Gmail, Microsoft 365 or Outlook, the sign-in options above need no settings at all.
2. Use the Gmail or Outlook buttonBeside Fill in the usual settings for, press Gmail, Outlook or IONOS. It fills in host, port and encryption — a one-click shortcut, not a saved choice. The port and the encryption also keep each other right: 465 goes with SSL, 587 with TLS.
3. Enter the UsernameThe mailbox login, which is nearly always the full email address you send from. Leave it blank and Booked signs in with your From email instead (if there is a password; with no password at all, SMTP authentication is off).
4. Enter the PasswordFor Gmail or Outlook, an app password generated inside that account — not your normal account password.
5. Press SaveThen send yourself a test, as below.

• 1SMTP — choosing this reveals everything below it. Switching back hides the fields but does not erase what you typed.
• 2Fill in the usual settings for — Gmail or Outlook fills host, port and encryption in one click. Neither button stays pressed; that is not a fault.
• 3SMTP host, Port and Encryption — leave SMTP host empty and the whole section is ignored, with mail quietly falling back to the default route. Keep Encryption on TLS.
• 4Username and Password — the mailbox login, usually the address you send from; a blank username uses your From email. For Gmail or Outlook the password must be an app password, not your normal account password.

Check that a message really sent

Use Send yourself a test on Emails & texts after every change: getting SMTP wrong is otherwise silent. Then check Messages › Sent to see what went out to real customers.

• 1The period — the last 30 days to begin with; widen it to find an older message.
• 2The counts — emails and texts sent, and how many didn’t send, in that period; underneath, one count per kind of message (confirmations, reminders, changes and cancellations, payments, alerts to your team and so on). Click a kind to list only those.
• 3The log — every email and text, with each email’s subject or the opening of each text, who it went to, which booking it was about, and whether it was accepted. Not sent and Failed carry the reason. Search it by name, address or subject. The same list, for one booking, is on the booking under Messages sent.

Send a test to a Gmail address and an Outlook one, and check both junk folders.

"Sent to … via …" means the message left your site, so if nothing turns up the problem is at the receiving end. "It did not send." means your site could not hand it over: change how mail leaves, not the template.

When a customer says nothing arrived

First work out whether a message was ever meant to go. Booked's emails fire when something happens to a booking — it is made, paid for, refunded, edited or cancelled — when a reminder falls due, or when someone joins the waiting list or buys a package.

Your own team can have an email when a customer books online, cancels or moves from their account, joins the waiting list or buys a package — see Alerts to your team. Nobody at the business gets a copy of what the customer was sent. For a daily run-down of the diary, switch on Messages › Daily digest.