I have totally edited my original email question - as i watched @Eldar’s video and gave me answers! so thank you.
I do have one issue - and this is not a blocs problem, but a gmail issue and I have been looking on youtube and this forum to get a solution.
Now for this basic form I am playing with I am sending the form to my personal Gmail email - this does work! but today its taking forever for forms to be sent. Sometimes 5 mins…10 mins…and today 2hrs and yesterday 5hrs !
On my Gmail account - I have gone over the settings and can not see where I need to change or do anything to make the emails send? sometimes they go to spam…sometimes not.
This leads me to see if any of your clients run their email through googles Workspace account. I run all my business through this as its been flawless…so with this in mind, I am wondering if I would get issues with forms with this too?
I will keep reading up on it ! but if anyone has any Gmail advice on forms in Blocs this would be appreciated.
Hi, @AdieJAM email not directly linked to your website (like Gmail) will be always a challenge. Depending on host some work well and some do not allow you. Indeed, I personally think this has nothing to do with Blocs itself. In this kind of situations, I do use a “middle man” called Formspree. We can have endless discussions about pro’s and con’s of a middle man but for me, it works on some projects for over 3 years now without one single issue.
There are problems with Gmail when used as a forwarding address from either a web form or as a forward from a domain specific email address. It’s not unknown for mail delivery to be delayed by 6 days or more or having emails end up in a junk folder.
There can be many reasons for this, chief of which is that the mail looks like spam. If it doesn’t appear to have an identifiable “from” address or contains URL links in the body or signature of the email, it can easily be flagged as suspicious. In some cases, if the email appears to have been sent from a domain, rather than an email address, this can cause the mail to go AWAL. Another factor can be the frequency of your test submissions. If these are happening in relatively quick succession, the emails will most likely get delayed as they may be viewed as a spam attack.
Then there is the other issue of shared hosting. It maybe that one or more other domains that share your server IP have been blacklisted as known spamming sources. This can automatically cause your emails to be be blocked by the great Google.
You’re certainly not alone in experiencing this phenomenon. There are many forums out there that are littered with questions like yours. In many cases, people get referred to a raft of google documentation pages to try and fathom out what the problem could be. The problem is there are so many potential causes that it’s often not worth the effort of trying to get it sorted.
If you have a domain then its best to use a domain-specific email address for all your form submissions. I can think of no reason why anyone would want to use a Gmail address if they have the option of using a domain-specific email address. Most hosting accounts will let you create a number of email accounts as part of the deal, so why not use that facility. If you particularly like Gmail because you prefer a web-based email client instead of a real email client such as Apple Mail or Thunderbird, most web hosts give you a webmail interface that you can use just like Gmail - i.e you login through a web browser and check your mail etc.
I have always used domain specific email addresses and get my emails delivered across all my devices without any problem whatsoever. Not only does a domain-specific email address look more professional, it also prevents your emails from being blocked by some companies who simply won’t accept mails from a gmail account.
Totally, I stick with domain emails too. Only ever had problems with gmail email. Any issues I have had with Office365 have always been MX record issues. Specifically where a client was hosted with Go-Daddy and they had setup Office365 through GoDaddy itself - go figure, you would expect they would set up all the records properly when using a products they sold you.
I agree. I had a few issues sending from an Apple mail account. So I use domain emails too.
During my endless search for a solution I found a handy tool to check how your mail is performing here: https://www.phpjabbers.com/free-tools/email-blacklist-checker/92/
Well I took your advice and on this particular domain/form created an email from my domain and the forms working perfect ! so thats all good. I was using a standard gmail.com email originally on this form.
Right - the issue I have not checked as yet is the Gmail business account - this is a domain-specific email, but its forwarded through google workspace, i basically have the domain and create the email in my hosting as normal and then I migrate the IMAP servers to google workspace - its huge for businesses now. I must know of 20-30 + people who have this now.
I have my main business email with them - and i went on an early plan and I have a 2TB email account and unlimited google drive and full use of all the suites which I use a lot.
I think its trial and error, I think I will give it a go on setting it up and seeing if the forms work ok still - as long as the domain and email is set up on my hosting and then sent to google…
@AdieJAM. What is the specific benefit of using Gmail business? Surely you can get just as good and fast a service from your own hosting company! apart from the normal “google-snooping” which will benefit Google, I wouldn’t have thought there was any great advantage to the email account holder.
Hi @hendon52 - I first started using it about 5 years ago as my 1and1 email inbox was full and I was on an event and the whole company on this job I went on them just moved to them. It was cheaper to have the full package from Google - with no ads and pro use of all their tools and brilliant back up and service then it was to have more storage on just an email.
So many huge organisations have moved to Google Workspace now you get full pro access and unlimited access to all of googles suites and they just all talk to each other. Its a one stop shop for business.
Here is an example - I had a small job 3 weeks ago editing some videos for a health company. This company was global all around the world - The end client created a live form in google sheets and we collaborated all our emails together as all 12 of us was in the google suites system and our adding our emails was simple. The sheets when I updated when a video was complete sent out to the whole industry and all admin in this group had an automated email from mine saying changes had been done. The google chat we had the other day, they asked about a job we did 2 years ago and it all came up on the email thread where I could easily select it. I also have Google Vault which archives all my emails I have had which got imported in from my old 1and1 and I have 13 years worth of emails all in the vault and all my wife’s emails are stored in the vault too, and also an email I use for live events is all stores in the vault too.
For just generally sending emails out and receiving, and if pretty low key - then no need I guess, but i find it really useful on a business side of things.
I do currently run a form on my old hosting package that is through 1and1 and then into google, so I am hoping that when I move it to Site Ground and then forward to Google - the forms on my website for my personal business will still work as in theory its still going through SiteGround before it hits google.
I am surprised no one on here has had a company they have done a website for that has not used this yet.
Here is how its done - its simply changing the MX records LINK
Here are some links to what I have : LINK