Remove a block on site emails

If your site’s outgoing emails are blocked, it means site-generated emails (such as contact form notifications or new user registrations) will not be sent. In this guide, you’ll learn how to prevent email sending blocks, how to recognize when one occurs, and what steps to take to resolve it.

WordPress.com will pause messages to protect our mail servers from spam or abuse. This block affects emails sent from the site such as:

• Comment notifications
• Contact form submissions
• WooCommerce emails (such as order confirmations)
• New user registration emails
• WP admin password reset emails

Your WordPress.com account emails (for example, billing receipts or account security messages) are not affected.

If emails have suddenly stopped arriving as intended, your site’s emails may be blocked temporarily. If you use an email logging or SMTP plugin, the logs may show rejection errors or messages about blocked sending.

Blocks are triggered to keep email sending safe and reliable for everyone. To reduce the risk of a block:

• Avoid spam triggers: Do not send excessive automated or promotional messages at a high volume.
• Prevent bounces: Don’t send to lists of unverified or outdated email addresses, which cause messages to bounce at a high rate.
• Send from your domain: Use a custom domain email address for emails sent from your site, not free webmail addresses like @gmail.com or @yahoo.com (many receiving mail servers reject or downgrade emails sent in bulk from these types of addresses).
• Set up authentication: Make sure your domain has SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records set up with your email provider. This improves deliverability and reduces spam flags.
• Secure site registration: To close a common spam entry point that bots abuse, disable the “Anyone can register” setting if it is not needed, or set up CAPTCHA on registration forms if it is needed.

If email sending from your site has been blocked, follow these recommended steps to fix the issue:

WordPress.com sites with plugins enabled include an “Anyone can register” option, which allows anyone to create an account via the default registration page. However, this registration endpoint is often abused by spammers who sign up to your site, triggering automated emails and resulting in a block.

If you use WooCommerce, membership plugins, or other registration forms, you may require this setting activated (review your membership plugin’s documentation to confirm). In that case, enable CAPTCHA to protect against spam registrations. Popular options include Google reCAPTCHA or other anti-spam plugins available in the plugin repository or the WooCommerce Marketplace.

If you do not require the “Anyone can register” option, you can disable it with the following steps:

1. Visit your site’s dashboard.
2. Navigate to Settings → General.
3. Uncheck the “Anyone can register” setting.
4. Click the “Save settings” button.

If you send emails to registered users, clean up your site’s user list to avoid sending emails that are likely to bounce:

1. Visit your site’s dashboard.
2. Navigate to Users → All Users.
3. Remove suspicious accounts (for example, users with bot-like email addresses or patterns like test123@xyz.com).
4. Regularly monitor new registrations for signs of spam.

Check that your domain includes the correct SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records. These authentication records help prove your domain is authorized to send mail.

Add missing records if you use Professional Email (Titan), Google Workspace, or another provider by following the steps in our guide to set up email authentication for your domain.

If the other suggestions in this guide do not help with your site’s blocked emails, you can create a dedicated server to handle emails sent from your site, instead of relying on the default system. See our full guide on how to set up an SMTP plugin.

Once your site is secured and email authentication is in place, the block will be lifted automatically. In most cases, blocks are removed within 2 days after the issue is resolved.

To confirm the block has been lifted, trigger a normal notification (for example, submit a contact form) and check if the message arrives in your inbox.

If you continue to experience issues with blocked emails, get in touch.