FormWatch Troubleshooting

The test email did not arrive

If the dashboard showed a green notice, WordPress handed the message to your mailer. The problem is after that point.

1. Check your spam or junk folder, and wait a few minutes.
2. Send the test to a different address, ideally one on another provider.
3. If you use an SMTP plugin or email service, check its own log or dashboard for the message.
4. Check that your site’s From address is a real address on a domain you send from. The default wordpress@your-site address is often rejected or marked as spam.
5. If you use the default WordPress mailer, ask your host whether outgoing mail is allowed, or switch to an SMTP email service.

If the dashboard showed a red notice and a Test row marked Problem, the Details column gives WordPress’s reason. Fix that first.

The status says “No data yet”

That is normal on a new install. FormWatch only reports what it has seen. Run the mail-path test or submit a form, and the status updates. It also returns to “No data yet” if nothing at all was recorded for a full 7 days.

My form submissions do not appear

1. Check Form plugins detected under Health check. If your form plugin is not listed, it is either not active or not supported. FormWatch supports Contact Form 7, WPForms, Elementor Forms, Gravity Forms, Fluent Forms and Formidable Forms.
2. Submit the form on the live page of your site. Previews inside a form builder do not count.
3. Make sure the submission really went through and was not blocked by a spam filter or a validation error, which stops it before the form plugin reports success.
4. Reload the FormWatch dashboard.

Gravity Forms and Elementor Forms are recognized from their documentation but have not been tested on real sites yet. If one does not work, tell us.

A form shows OK but my customer never got the email

OK on a form row means FormWatch saw the submission arrive. It does not mean the form’s email was sent or delivered. Look for a Mail Problem row around the same time. If there is none, the message was handed off, so check your mailer’s log, spam folders and the form’s own settings, such as the recipient address. Only Contact Form 7 reports a failure of the form’s own email.

I did not get an alert email

1. Under Failure alerts and data, check that the box is ticked and the addresses are right, then save.
2. Alerts are limited to one per hour. Problems in between are combined into the next email.
3. Look for a row marked Alert in the flight recorder. “Failure alert emailed” means it was sent. “Alert email could not be sent” means your mail is failing, so fix the mail problem first.
4. After four failed attempts FormWatch stops retrying until you click Mark as reviewed and a new problem is recorded. The red notice in your WordPress admin stays visible in the meantime.

The status will not clear

Click Mark as reviewed once you have dealt with the problem. Without that, a problem keeps counting for up to 7 days. If a new problem is recorded afterward, the status comes back.

I copied my site to a staging site

FormWatch keeps working on the copy, and it can email you about problems on staging. Turn off failure alerts on staging, or use a different address, so real and test problems are not mixed up.

The dashboard looks broken or unstyled

Clear any page or admin caching, and any plugin that combines or minifies admin files, then reload. If it still looks wrong, send us a screenshot and the names of other plugins that change the admin screens.

Removing FormWatch

• Deactivating stops FormWatch and keeps its data in your database.
• Deleting the plugin removes everything it stored, including settings.

Getting help

Contact us through Support and include:

• Your FormWatch version, WordPress version and PHP version.
• The form plugin you use, and its version.
• What you did, what you expected and what happened.
• A screenshot of the flight recorder.

Please do not send what visitors typed into your forms. FormWatch does not store it, and we do not need it.