I have verified that postfix is installed and that I can successfully send emails using echo test | mail myname@mydomain.com, and the email arrives as it should.
However, when I try to send an email from WordPress (Contact form 7, or Test Email plugin, the emails do not arrive.
The problem seems to be with the rejection of the domain of the sender address by staysecuregroup.com, where the sender address is www-data@WP-NewBase-052814.
The domain WP-NewBase-052814 doesn’t exist, and this is why staysecuregroup.com rejects it.
But how can I control what this Sender address is? My droplet was created from the standard “WordPress-App” disk image from DigitalOcean.
In /var/log/mail.log I see:
Jan 19 08:19:17 energy postfix/pickup[1803]: 99446628B1: uid=33 from=<www-data>
Jan 19 08:19:17 energy postfix/cleanup[1837]: 99446628B1: message-id=3cf4a062382f3b66673965d7829eb468@mysite.com
Jan 19 08:19:17 energy postfix/qmgr[1804]: 99446628B1: from=www-data@WP-NewBase-052814, size=766, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Jan 19 08:19:17 energy postfix/smtp[1839]: 99446628B1: host mx10-se.staysecuregroup.com[91.236.208.20] said: 450 4.1.8 www-data@WP-NewBase-052814: Sender address rejected: Domain not found (in reply to RCPT TO command)
Jan 19 08:19:17 energy postfix/smtp[1839]: 99446628B1: to=myname@mysite.com, relay=mx10-se.staysecuregroup.com[79.136.102.120]:25, delay=0.32, delays=0.05/0.03/0.2/0.04, dsn=4.1.8, status=deferred (host mx10-se.staysecuregroup.com[79.136.102.120] said: 450 4.1.8 www-data@WP-NewBase-052814: Sender address rejected: Domain not found (in reply to RCPT TO command))
This textbox defaults to using Markdown to format your answer.
You can type !ref in this text area to quickly search our full set of tutorials, documentation & marketplace offerings and insert the link!
Try sudo nano /etc/postfix/main.cf and look for the line ‘myhostname’. change ‘WP-NewBase-052814’ to your hostname and then do the same in the line ‘mydomains’. This worked for me.
`
Hello all,
What I could suggest here is using an SMTP plugin for your WordPress site.
That way you will be able to specify an SMTP server with authentication which your emails would be going through. You could for example use SendGrid’s SMTP service. This would drastically increase the delivery rate of your emails as well compared to using plain PHP mail.
I’ve been using this plugin for a while now and it works very well: Easy WP SMTP.
Hope that this helps! Regards, Alex
Become a contributor for community
Get paid to write technical tutorials and select a tech-focused charity to receive a matching donation.
DigitalOcean Documentation
Full documentation for every DigitalOcean product.
Resources for startups and AI-native businesses
The Wave has everything you need to know about building a business, from raising funding to marketing your product.
The developer cloud
Scale up as you grow — whether you're running one virtual machine or ten thousand.
Get started for free
Sign up and get $200 in credit for your first 60 days with DigitalOcean.*
*This promotional offer applies to new accounts only.