Email notifications
Get told when someone submits, and send a confirmation back to them.
A new form arrives with a working admin notification already set up, using the address you gave during onboarding. Submissions reach you without any configuration.
Admin notification
Open the Notifications tab in the form builder to change it.
- Send to — one or more addresses, comma separated
- Subject — supports merge tags
- Message — the email body, also supports merge tags
The default body includes the full submission plus its attribution:
A new submission has been received.
{all_fields}
Submitted from: {source_url}
Traffic Source: {traffic_source}
UTM Campaign: {utm_campaign}
Device: {device_type} / {browser}Reply-To
Set Reply-To to the submitter’s email merge tag — usually {field_email} — so replying in your mail client goes straight to them rather than to yourself.
Confirmation to the submitter
You can also send an automatic acknowledgement. Add a notification addressed to the submitter’s email merge tag rather than a fixed address.
Keep these short and useful: confirm what was received and say when they can expect a reply. Do not include {all_fields} if the form collects anything sensitive.
The From address
Sense Forms deliberately leaves the From address empty so WordPress sends from wordpress@your-site-domain.com.
This matters more than it looks. Sending as your own address — say a Gmail one — usually means the message fails SPF, because Gmail’s SPF record does not authorise your web server to send on its behalf. Receiving servers then treat the mail as spoofed and bin it silently. Sending from your own domain avoids that entirely.
If you want a branded From address, set it in the SMTP settings using an address on a domain you control.
When delivery fails
If WordPress cannot hand a message to a mail server, Sense Forms records it and shows a warning in your admin for the following week.
The submission is never lost. It is saved in Entries before any email is attempted, so a delivery failure costs you the notification, not the lead.
Failures are almost always a host problem rather than a plugin problem. Setting up SMTP resolves them permanently.