# Email failure alerts

Source: https://catalystgroup.gg/docs/email-delivery/email-alerts/
Updated: 2026-10-19 · By Duane Garner

Get told straight away when your site cannot send an email, by email, chat, SMS or webhook, and why a non-email channel is the safer choice.

When a password reset or an order receipt fails to send, you want to know before your customers tell you. This article explains the **Alerts** tab: what triggers an alert, how to set up alert emails, and which other channels are available. It is for site owners and support teams responsible for a site's email.

 

## Open the Alerts tab

 

Go to **CRM-NG SMTP → Settings → Alerts**. The first section is **Email Failure Alerts**.

 

## What triggers an alert

 

CRM-NG SMTP sends an alert each time your mailer refuses an email or cannot be reached, and the email ends up with the status **Failed** in the log. This includes failed test emails sent from **Tools → Email Test**.

 

You do **not** get an alert when:

 
- the [backup SMTP transport](https://catalystgroup.gg/docs/email-delivery/backup-smtp-transport/) rescued the email (status **Sent-backup**),
- the email was stopped on purpose by **Do Not Send** (status **Blocked**),
- the email was accepted but later bounced at the recipient's end. That is a delivery event, not a sending failure. See [Understanding delivery status](https://catalystgroup.gg/docs/email-delivery/delivery-status/).

 

Every failure sends its own alert. If your mailer goes down on a busy site, you will receive one alert per failed email.

 

## Set up alert emails

 
1. Enter addresses
  In **Alert email addresses**, type one or more addresses. **Separate multiple addresses with commas.**
2. Save
  Press **Save Alert Settings** at the bottom of the tab.
3. Test it
  Go to **Tools → Email Test** and send a test while your mailer is deliberately misconfigured, for example with a wrong key on a staging site. Then put the right settings back.

 

Each alert email has the subject "[Your site name] WordPress email failed" and a short body with the failed email's subject, its From address and the error text.

 

## Why a webhook is recommended

 

The tab itself warns: **Alert emails pass through WordPress mail, so a webhook is recommended when the primary mail service itself may be unavailable.**

 

In plain terms: alert emails go out through the same mailer that just failed. If the failure is "wrong password" or "service down", the alert email fails too, and you hear nothing.

 

> **Use at least one non-email channel:** For anything important, add a channel that does not depend on your mail service: Slack, Discord, Microsoft Teams, SMS, WhatsApp or a generic webhook. These are sent straight from your web server over HTTPS.

 

If you only use email alerts, choose an address on a different provider from your sending domain, so a problem with one does not hide the other.

 

## Other alert channels

 

All of these live on the same tab and are saved with **Save Alert Settings**. You can use as many as you like at once.

 

| Channel | Section on the tab | Guide |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Any service that accepts JSON | Generic webhook URL | Generic webhook alerts |
| Slack | Chat and Incident Webhooks | Slack alerts |
| Discord | Chat and Incident Webhooks | Discord alerts |
| Microsoft Teams | Chat and Incident Webhooks | Microsoft Teams alerts |
| SMS | Twilio SMS | SMS alerts with Twilio |
| WhatsApp | WhatsApp Cloud API | WhatsApp alerts |

 

Webhook addresses and tokens are stored encrypted. After saving, their boxes show **Saved — leave blank to keep** or **Token saved**. Leave them empty to keep the saved value, or type a new one to replace it.

 

Non-email alerts are sent in the background with a short time limit. They never slow down or block the page that tried to send the email.

 

## Alerts and the error banner

 

Separately from these alerts, CRM-NG SMTP shows a banner in the WordPress admin area, **CRM-NG SMTP: One or more emails recently failed to send.**, with a **View details** link. Alerts reach you when you are not logged in. The banner reminds you when you are.

 

## Related

 
- [Generic webhook alerts](https://catalystgroup.gg/docs/email-delivery/webhook-alerts/)
- [Slack alerts](https://catalystgroup.gg/docs/email-delivery/slack-alerts/)
- [Backup SMTP transport](https://catalystgroup.gg/docs/email-delivery/backup-smtp-transport/)
- [Viewing the email log](https://catalystgroup.gg/docs/email-delivery/viewing-the-email-log/)
- [Debugging sending issues](https://catalystgroup.gg/docs/email-delivery/debugging-sending-issues/)