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Emails Not Sending: The Complete Guide

“Where Is My Coupon Email?”

A visitor spins the wheel, wins a prize, sees “Check your email for your coupon code!” — and the email never arrives. This is one of the most common support questions we receive, and the honest answer is that most of the time the problem is not the Ultimate Spin Wheel plugin. It is how your WordPress site sends mail.

WordPress is a CMS, not an email service. When Ultimate Spin Wheel sends a winner email it hands the message to WordPress’s built-in wp_mail() function, which then relies on your server (or an SMTP plugin) to actually deliver it. This guide walks you through the full diagnosis, from plugin settings to your mail server.

First, Understand When an Email Is Even Sent

Ultimate Spin Wheel only sends a winner email when all of these conditions are true. If any one is missing, no email goes out — and that is by design, not a bug:

  • Email-only delivery is switched on for the campaign (see the Behavior tab, below). When this is off, the coupon code is shown on screen in the win popup and no email is sent at all.
  • The spin was a win and a coupon code was awarded. Losing spins and empty codes never trigger an email.
  • An email address was collected from the visitor. The winner email goes to the address entered in the lead form.

The Root Cause: Why Server Mail Fails

By default WordPress tries to send email directly from your web server (Bluehost, SiteGround, and similar). This fails silently for several reasons:

  1. No authentication: The message carries no verified “signature” proving it came from your domain, so Gmail and Outlook treat it as suspicious or drop it.
  2. Poor IP reputation: On shared hosting your server’s IP may already be blacklisted because a neighbouring site sent spam.
  3. Sending limits: Many hosts throttle outgoing mail (for example 50 messages per hour). During a busy campaign, emails simply get dropped.

The Fix: Install an SMTP Plugin

Route your WordPress mail through a real provider (Gmail, SendGrid, Amazon SES, and so on) using a dedicated SMTP plugin. This single step resolves the vast majority of “email not arriving” reports. Popular free choices include WP Mail SMTP and FluentSMTP. Once an SMTP plugin is configured, every email WordPress sends — including Spin Wheel winner emails — is delivered through it automatically.

Step-by-Step Debugging

Step A: Confirm the Plugin Tried to Send

  1. Open your campaign and go to the Behavior tab.
  2. Expand the Email Verification (Lead Delivery) section and make sure Enable Email-only Coupons is turned on. With this on, the coupon is delivered by email instead of being shown in the popup.
  3. Check your lead form actually collects an email address. If a visitor never enters an email, there is nowhere to send the coupon.

Step B: Confirm the Visitor Actually Won

Emails are only sent for winning spins. Verify the test spin was a genuine win:

  1. Open the Leads dashboard.
  2. Find your test entry and check its status and prize. If it recorded as a loss (a Lose (No Prize) outcome, a Pro slice type), the plugin correctly sent no email.
  3. For a reliable test, temporarily raise a winning slice’s probability so you are guaranteed to win. See Win Probabilities for how the weighted draw works.

Step C: Test Your Mail Server

If the campaign settings are correct, test the server itself:

  1. Install and configure an SMTP plugin such as WP Mail SMTP.
  2. Use its built-in test-email tool to send a message to yourself.
  3. If the test fails: your server’s mail configuration is broken and Spin Wheel cannot send emails until it is fixed. Contact your host or finish the SMTP setup.
  4. If the test succeeds: your server can send mail, so the problem is delivery or filtering downstream. Continue to Advanced Troubleshooting.

Advanced Troubleshooting

The Email Lands in Spam

Sometimes the message sends perfectly but the recipient’s provider files it under spam. Two things help most:

  • Sender address: Make sure the “From” address used by your SMTP plugin matches your website’s domain (for example [email protected] rather than a personal @gmail.com address). This is configured in your SMTP plugin, not in Ultimate Spin Wheel — the plugin does not have its own “From Email” setting and simply uses whatever WordPress and your SMTP plugin provide.
  • Subject line: The winner email uses an automatically generated, neutral subject (for example “Your Coupon from Your Site Name”), so it already avoids spam-trigger phrases like “YOU WON” or “FREE MONEY”. You do not need to edit it.

The Mail Log: Your Smoking Gun

If you are still unsure whether the plugin is sending, install a logging plugin such as WP Mail Logging, then spin the wheel again and check the log:

  • The email appears in the log: Ultimate Spin Wheel did its job and handed the message to WordPress successfully. Any non-delivery from here is a server or spam issue downstream (fix it with SMTP).
  • The email is missing from the log: the plugin never triggered a send. Re-check Step A — email-only delivery must be on, the spin must be a win, and an email address must have been collected.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I use Mailchimp to send the coupon instead?

Email-marketing integrations, including Mailchimp, MailPoet, Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign, HubSpot, Zapier, and Pabbly, are available in Ultimate Spin Wheel Pro (Pro). With Pro you can pass winners (and their coupon data) into your email platform and let it handle the delivery automation, which often improves deliverability compared with sending straight from your web server. In the free plugin, coupon emails are sent through WordPress’s wp_mail(), so configuring an SMTP plugin is the key to reliable delivery.

Does the plugin limit how many emails I can send?

No. Ultimate Spin Wheel does not cap winner emails. Your host may, however, throttle outgoing mail. For high-volume campaigns (thousands of spins per day), route mail through a dedicated service such as SendGrid or Amazon SES via your SMTP plugin.

The coupon shows on screen but no email arrives — is that broken?

No. When Enable Email-only Coupons is off, the coupon is meant to appear on screen in the win popup and no email is sent. Turn on email-only delivery in the Behavior tab if you want the code delivered by email instead of shown.

Related Documentation

Conclusion

Email delivery is a chain: Plugin → WordPress → Mail Server → Recipient. Ultimate Spin Wheel handles the first link — when email-only delivery is on and a visitor wins with an email on file, it hands a neutral, ready-to-send message to WordPress. Almost every “email not arriving” report is resolved by installing an SMTP plugin so that message actually leaves your server. If you need a hand, visit the wowDevs support center.

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