Email notifications

For each submission, Promptless Forms sends an HTML email listing the answers. By default it goes to the site’s admin email address. You change who gets it, the subject and the sender in the form’s settings.notification.

When to use it

• Someone needs to act on each submission as it arrives.
• To send submissions to a spreadsheet, CRM or chat tool, use a webhook as well or instead.

How to set it up

Add a notification object to the form’s settings:

"settings": {
  "notification": {
    "to": "office@example.com, sales@example.com",
    "subject": "New {form_title} from {field:name}",
    "from_name": "{site_name}",
    "from_email": "forms@example.com",
    "reply_to": "{field:email}"
  }
}

Then install an SMTP or transactional-email plugin (see Deliverability) and send a test submission.

Options

Option	What it does	Default
enabled	Send the email. Set false to turn it off.	true
to	One or more recipients, separated by commas, or a list. Invalid addresses are skipped.	{admin_email}
subject	The subject line.	New Form Submission
from_name	The sender’s display name.	{site_name}
from_email	The sender’s address. Must be a fixed address; see below.	{admin_email}
reply_to	Where replies go. Usually {field:email}.	none

hide_empty_fields sits in settings, beside notification rather than inside it. When true (the default), optional fields the visitor left blank are left out of the email. Set it to false to list every field, with a dash for blanks.

Tokens

Token	Becomes
{admin_email}	The site’s admin email address (Settings → General)
{site_name}	The site title
{site_url}	The site’s home address
{form_title}	The form’s title
{field:key}	What the visitor entered in the field with that key

In the subject and sender name, a {field:key} token for a dropdown, radio or checkbox shows the option’s label.

The sender address

from_email must be a fixed address on a domain your email service has verified, such as forms@yourdomain.com. Services such as Amazon SES, Postmark, SendGrid, Resend and Google Workspace refuse mail from any other domain, so the email never leaves the site.

Important

Since 1.10.0 a {field:…} token in from_email is refused when you save the form. Put the visitor’s address in reply_to instead. A form saved before 1.10.0 with such a token sends its email from WordPress’s default sender, and uses the token as the reply-to address if reply_to is empty.

Send to different people by answer

to can use a field token. Make a dropdown whose option values are email addresses, and set "to": "{field:department}". The value, not the label, is used here. Only use this with a dropdown or radio buttons: their values are checked against the options you wrote.

What the email contains

• The form title as a heading, and the date and time received.
• Each field’s label and answer, with option labels instead of values. Email addresses and phone numbers are links.
• Fields hidden by conditions and message fields are left out. Required fields always appear.
• Uploaded files, listed with a link and size, and attached to the email up to 10 MB in total. Larger files are linked but not attached, so the email is not refused by the mail server.
• A View all entries link to the admin.

Deliverability

WordPress sends mail through the host’s mail function by default, which many inboxes treat as spam or never receive. Install an SMTP or transactional-email plugin and set it up with a verified sending domain, then set from_email to an address on that domain.

Limits and common problems

• When sending fails, the entry’s Email column shows it as failed, and the email is tried again after 5 minutes, 30 minutes and 2 hours. Retries need WordPress’s scheduled tasks (WP-Cron) to run, and carry the same attachments. After more than five failures an admin notice says email notifications have failed recently.
• “Sent” means WordPress handed the email over. If it never arrives, check your email service’s log. See Troubleshooting.
• No email to the visitor. There is no built-in confirmation email to the person who submitted. Use a FlowMint workflow for that.
• Large files are links, not attachments. Above 10 MB in total, files are linked in the email instead. A developer can change the amount with the pforms_notification_attachment_budget filter.

Available since Promptless Forms 1.10.0.

Related pages

• Creating and editing forms — The Forms screen, form ID rules, the parts of a form's JSON and every form-level setting.
• Entries — Read, mark, search, export and delete form submissions, and what each entry stores, including uploaded files.
• Troubleshooting — Fixes for forms that do not appear, emails that do not arrive, submissions that seem to vanish, and other common problems.
• Webhooks — Send every submission to Zapier, Make, Google Sheets or your own endpoint, with signed requests, retries and a delivery status on each entry.