BugWP logo BugWP
Back to Community
Home / Community / General

How to Resend Failed Emails in Post SMTP: A Guide to Manual and Automated Options

18 threads Sep 17, 2025

Content

If your WordPress site relies on email for order confirmations, user registrations, or contact forms, a failed email can be a major headache. A common challenge for users of the Post SMTP plugin is figuring out how to efficiently manage and resend emails that didn't go through the first time. This guide will walk you through the available methods, from manual resends to exploring more automated solutions.

Understanding the Core Problem

Emails can fail for various reasons, such as hitting an API sending limit (e.g., with Amazon SES or Mailgun), a temporary issue with your SMTP provider, or an invalid recipient address. When this happens, the email is logged in the Post SMTP Email Log with a "Failed" status. The immediate need is to get these important messages to their intended recipients without manually processing each one, which can be incredibly time-consuming.

Solution 1: Manual Resend (One-by-One)

The built-in, free functionality of the Post SMTP plugin allows you to resend emails individually. This is practical for dealing with one or two failures.

  1. Navigate to WordPress Admin > Email Log.
  2. Locate the failed email in the log list.
  3. Click the "Resend" link next to the failed email.
  4. The plugin will immediately attempt to send the email again using your primary configured SMTP method.

Important Consideration: As noted by users in the support forums, if the failure was due to an API limit or quota, an immediate resend attempt will likely fail again. The plugin's core free version does not currently automatically detect and wait for these types of errors.

Solution 2: The Need for Bulk Resending

Many users have requested a bulk action feature to select multiple failed emails and resend them all at once. Based on analysis of community threads, this feature is not currently available in the free version of the Post SMTP plugin. The official support responses on the WordPress.org forum frequently indicate that advanced functionality for managing failed emails is part of a paid extension.

Solution 3: Exploring Advanced Email Management

For sites that experience frequent email failures or have a high volume of emails, a more automated approach is often necessary. The Post SMTP team has developed an extension named "Advanced Email Delivery and Logs" designed to address these specific needs. Based on community feedback, this extension offers features that can help:

  • Automated Retry: Automatically re-attempts to send failed emails.
  • Bulk Management: Allows for resending emails in bulk from the log.
  • Quota Management: Helps manage email sending limits to prevent hitting API quotas.

If your workflow requires bulk actions or automated retries, investigating this extension may provide a solution. Since BugWP.com is an independent resource, we recommend searching for "Post SMTP Advanced Email Delivery and Logs" to find the official extension page for more details.

Solution 4: Using a Custom Hook for Automation

For developers, the Post SMTP plugin provides a hook that can be used to trigger custom actions immediately when an email fails to send. This is useful for logging failures to a separate system or triggering custom notifications beyond the plugin's built-in options.

You can use the post_smtp_on_failed action hook in your theme's functions.php file or a custom plugin:

add_action( 'post_smtp_on_failed', 'my_custom_failure_action', 10, 6 );
function my_custom_failure_action( $log, $message, $transcript, $transport, $error_message ) {
    // Your custom code here. For example:
    // Log the error to a file
    // Send a notification to a Slack channel
    // Update a custom database table
}

This hook provides data about the failed email, allowing for highly customized troubleshooting and workflow automation.

Conclusion

Resending failed emails in Post SMTP can be handled manually for occasional issues. However, for bulk resending or automated retry logic, the current solutions point towards the plugin's paid extensions or custom development using the provided hook. Understanding these options allows you to choose the best method to ensure reliable email delivery for your WordPress site.

Related Support Threads Support