So, you have a form on your website that’s trying to send a G-Suite email address, but they’re just not getting it.
The form sends to other email addresses just fine. It even sends out to other gmail accounts. It just doesn’t send to the g-suite accounts that end in with the website’s domain name.
Weird, right?
If this is you, keep reading: because I’ve found a super simple fix to an otherwise bewildering problem.
Why I Wrote This:
The other day I was helping a client who wasn’t receiving emails from their forms. I had them check their spam, and ran through all the usual tests.
The form sent to my email without problem. I had them try some other accounts and it worked fine there too. But every email ending in the customer’s domain name didn’t work.
What’s going on here?
I was stumped until I came across a forum thread that explained, if a website host already provides email hosting, the website will send email to the internal email server, even if there’s an MX Record telling it to go to G-Suite.
An example…
Say you have a form on scconstruction.biz that sends an email to joe@scconstruction.biz, that’s not being delivered (because it’s sending to the internal email server instead of honoring the MX record).
Where I found the solution?
Eventually I found a forum thread with a useful but obscure trick that ensures the email gets sent to G-Suite’s servers.
After I was done helping the client, I realized I might have trouble finding that information again. So I wrote this guide mainly for myself, but also for anyone else who might run into the same problem.
The Solution:
The workaround is to append .test-google-a.
In other words, send to joe@DOMAIN.COM.test-google-a.
Append .test-google-a.com to your email address to ensure it’s delivered to G-Suite’s email server.
What do you think? Was this tip helpful? Let us know in the comments below…
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24 Comments
thank you
You’re awesome. That worked. Thanks so much
Excellect. It worked for me as well.
I wish i could kiss you.
You just saved me. I have been on support from both workspace and my hosting providers and all they could do was to blame each other.
Thanks a lot for this post
This is so useful. Thank a lot for this trick.
Wow. You really helped us ! Thanks
The append worked for me as well. Thanks for taking the time to post this on your website.
Thank you for sharing this article with us. It was quite beneficial.
thank you so much i spent hours trying to figure this out and moved hosts too as host said they would not allow 3rd party smtp like gsuite to send email to prevent spam. As a result the form would not authenticate with googles smtp so had to use a non gsuite email from my domain and the servers own hostname ie my domain.
So your method meant i can now send from site server to my gsuite email which is great except one more niggly suspicous email problem:
Be careful with this message
mydomain.com Mail could not verify that it actually came from mydomain.com. Avoid clicking links, downloading attachments or replying with personal information.
my mx records in cloudflare are set to gsuite and the the spf txt record is set to google and also includes my server IP yet the email from my domains secondary email setup just for the form is detected as suspicious by gsuite – do you know a way around this 🙂
Hi Dean,
That does seem strange. I’ve had plenty customers use G-Suite before without any such issues. But I do have a suggestion..
You might want to try is using an SMTP plugin. This works sort of like a mail client, so instead of sending email from the server, the emails are sent directly through your email account.
I have an article about SMPT plugins here: https://www.eznettools.com/useful-information/website-emails-going-to-spam-try-using-a-smtp-plugin/
Also, here’s an article specifically about setting one up a SMPT plugin with GSuite: https://wpmailsmtp.com/docs/how-to-set-up-the-gmail-mailer-in-wp-mail-smtp/
One last tip: If you website does a lot of business, you may want to use a dedicated email address for the website’s emails, because every email sent from the website will show up in your Gmail’s “Sent” box. If this email is the same one you use for daily correspondence, you may have trouble finding your regular “sent” emails in the mass of emails sent through your website.
Great!!! This has saved so much of my time!! Thanks a ton Bro!!
very well written bro. Helpful Info
Dude! You rock!!! This works
thank you so much sir
Thanks a lot
Hey buddy Thanks , I got fed up since last 7 Days resolving the issue. I never thought that Just a simple addition of test.google.com will resolve my problem.
Thanks bro once again
Hi,I am trying to setup emails that can come from my website to my email address and also i can send emails to my customer from my website. I found its too hard to configure. I am running a bitnami wordpress on google cloud platform and want to configure with my gsuite gmail account. It will be help if you can provide my any guidance. I am looking for help. If it is possible please revert me on my email address. looking forward for your help.
This helped me too. Thanks a million!!
Thank you!!!! It works. Wish our web developer knew this 8 months ago.
This worked for WP Form Plugin! Thank you so, so much.
Geez … you’re both a genius and an angel!
Thanks for the great article
Worked for me using contact form 7 on WordPress. Thanks
I’m glad it was helpful! 🙂