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I have a strange situation with my websites and I wonder if anyone can help.

I have 4 websites, 2 websites used for testing (real domains on a live hosting plan, not a local staging site) and 2 live ones. On 3 sites, I:
• use the same SMTP plugin with the same settings and my host has confirmed the settings I set them to, are correct • are hosted by the same hosting service and plan and use the same email hosting provider
• are the same version of wordpress (6.6.1) • have the same PHP version (8.1)

Only one test site (Test Site 1) has no SMTP because I did not set up a domain specific email address for it, ie, no [email protected] which is needed to set up the SMPT.

Not including the SMTP, of the 2 test sites, both have 99% of the same plugins. I don't think the other 1% is responsible, but just to rule out doubt, they are add ons or plugins made for a main plugin, and I just wasn't bothered to set up all the additional and optional plugins for the main ones when I am just testing the email issue.

Even so:

What I am experiencing though is, on Test Site 1, when a user registers on my site, they get a verification email like they should, but on Test Site 2, they do not. They do not receive password reset emails either. As the admin, I do get wordpress emails like the ones that alert me when a new user registered or my site has crashed.

I tried several SMTP Plugins and sending myself test emails, and the test emails are received, and all emails are logged, including the new user registration verification emails so they look like they were sent, but I never receive them.

The only thing I can think of is Test Site 2 is an old site from a few years ago and Test Site 1 (the on without the SMTP) is a test site I use regularly by deleting the entire thing (all databases, all files etc) and starting over. For Test Site 2, I simply updated the wordpress version and plugin versions but never deleted it and would prefer not to. What is puzzling is, each time I delete the entire site from my hosting back end, and start over completely new, the email sending never has an issue, but Test Site 2 always does. Perhaps it has something to do with the site being old and having remnants of old code somewhere? Also I am not a developer.

Thank you

Edit:

User TonyDjukic asked if the site might have been blacklisted by email services and terminiated by the recipient's email provider. I have not thought of this. So I used 2 blacklist checkers to look at the old site, Tet Site 2, but I don't understand the results. If someone could interpret them, that would be great help in solving this mystery:
Screenshot 1: https://snipboard.io/rm1ERv.jpg
Screenshot 2: https://snipboard.io/CP3X5K.jpg

Do the green ticks mean the site was checked and is fine, or that it was checked and is black listed against those checks?

Also I've noticed that sometimes the emails are received, but after a long delay and it ends up in the spam folder. It's as if the situation "healed itself" over time and "improved" of its own accord from not being received at all to ending up in the spam folder.

Another update: Last week I got this email (https://snipboard.io/GQpcPK.jpg) when I did a test registration on Site 1. I've never seen an email in this format before and don't know why it looks like this. I've had emails from Wordprss that is from a number @ main hosting ed but not in a broken format like this.

No, I have not checked/fixed/done DNS, SPF and DKIM for the sites/email addresses because I thought they are test sites and not necessary to go through this processs. I also only recently found out about them by chance when asking my host provider for help and they mentioned these things, else I would have no idea what they are for or that they even exist. This becomes quite tedious when I delete a site and start over from scratch (deleting the site to start from scratch also deletes its email address accounts in my hosing provider so I'd have to do it all again).

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    Is it possible that the test domain for the old site (test 2) is blacklisted/flagged by email services somewhere and the emails are being sent but getting terminated at the recipients email provider? Commented Aug 29, 2024 at 14:29
  • @TonyDjukic I have not thought of this. I checked it just now using some random blacklist checkers but I can't understand the results. I've put the screenshot of the results in a link in my question if you can/want to look at it. Commented Aug 30, 2024 at 2:58
  • So the green ticks means it's passed (not blacklisted) but those scans don't check everywhere - there's always other servers, hosts and ISPs have their own... ...it's needle in haystack stuff. You also said that the emails do arrive, but after delay and in SPAM, so it's a deliverability issue. Being a test server you probably don't have all the email DNS/MX and verification records fully set up, so delivery will always be spotty and unreliable on the test/development environment. At this point, you check to make sure the emails are going out and when you deploy it should work on live. Commented Aug 30, 2024 at 14:32
  • The thing is, it's already a "real" environment in that it's a real domain, live website (not a staging site or local host), I am simply using it for testing right now. When I am satisfied with everything, I'll allow real people to register/start posting real content. I am simply stuck on the email issue at the moment. So, I am not sur what else I can do. Commented Sep 1, 2024 at 14:00
  • Did you go through the process of properly setting up all the email records in DNS? Not just the MX but the SPF, DKIM, etc. The stuff that verifies and validates the domain as being trustworthy? I've been finding email services a lot pickier lately, understandably, so until I've worked through all the email details, I don't even bother properly testing deliverability. Commented Sep 3, 2024 at 14:15

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Answering my own question to the best of my ability for my own future reference and in case anyone else finds this useful:

It seems even for a test site, an email address with the site's domain name is highly useful with email delivery, otherwise the "from" email addresses were like "u*******@srv604.main-hosting.eu" where the * are random numbers. So going through the trouble of setting it up properly by creating a proper email address (a receiving one like [email protected] for a contact form and a sending one for registrations like [email protected]) and setting up a SMTP plugin will help (use your hosting service provider's settings), though tedious.

Not a programmer but next, you need to the processes like Tony Djukic mentioned (SPF, DKIM, not sure what they are, I got help with this, plus other things so your emails don't go to spam) and this seems to take a few hours to work so over time my email delivery improved.

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