Troubleshooting Email Delivery Issues

If emails are not being delivered to or from a customer, there are several common causes and steps you can take to resolve the issue.

Emails Not Being Delivered TO a Customer

1. Check if Email Sending is Enabled

The most common reason a customer is not receiving emails is that email sending has been disabled for them. This can happen if the customer previously marked one of your messages as spam.

• Navigate to the event's People Section and check the @ icon next to the customer's name.
• If the @ icon is Red, email sending is disabled.
• To re-enable: click on the customer's name, then go to Actions > Enable Email Sending and click Save.

For more details, see How to Enable or Disable Email Sending.

2. Check the Activity Log and Delivery Report

To check the delivery status of any sent email, open the email in the event's Messages > Sent folder and scroll to the bottom. You will see a Delivered status link. Click on it to open a detailed delivery report showing the full history, including when the email was delivered, who read it, and whether there were any errors (such as an incorrect email address for one of the recipients).

If multiple people are on the account, the delivery report also shows which individual has read the email.

Note: A "read" status that appears at the same time as delivery may be caused by the recipient's email security scan rather than an actual read by the recipient.

When an email is queued, it typically sends within seconds or a few minutes. Click on the Delivered status to check the current status.

"Message Not Sent" activities are also listed in the Event Activity and the main Activity list.

You can also find email logs at Company > Email Log.

3. Ask the Customer to Check Their Spam Folder

Even if Sonas successfully delivers the email, the customer's email provider (e.g., Hotmail, Gmail) may route it to spam. Ask the customer to:

• Check their spam/junk folder.
• Mark emails from your venue as "Not Spam" to prevent future filtering.

4. Verify the Customer's Email Address

Confirm the email address listed in Sonas is correct. If it needs to be changed, you must add the customer again with the correct email and remove the old entry. See How to Use the People Section for instructions.

5. Anti-Spoofing or Security Policies Blocking Emails

If the recipient's organisation uses email security tools (e.g., Mimecast), emails sent from Sonas may be rejected by an anti-spoofing policy. This happens because the email appears to come from your venue's domain but is sent via an external mail server. The error message will typically include something like "Rejected by header based Anti-Spoofing policy."

To resolve this:

• Check the delivery report for the specific error message (click the delivery status at the bottom of the sent email).
• Share the error details with the recipient's IT team so they can whitelist Sonas sending addresses or adjust their anti-spoofing policy.
• Your Sonas sending email addresses can be found under Company > Email Domains. Ask the recipient's IT team to allow all three addresses listed there.
• After a hard bounce, the customer's email will be automatically deactivated in Sonas. Once the recipient's IT team has resolved the issue, you must re-enable email sending before trying again. See How to Enable or Disable Email Sending.

6. Hard Bounces Deactivate Email Sending

If an email hard bounces (e.g., "unknown user, mailbox not found" or anti-spoofing rejection), Sonas automatically disables email sending for that customer. Even after the underlying issue is fixed, you will need to manually re-enable email sending for the customer before messages will be delivered again. See How to Enable or Disable Email Sending.

Emails Not Being Received FROM a Customer

1. Check Outlook for Spam Filtering

Emails from customers are forwarded into Sonas via your Outlook (or other email provider) inbox. If a customer's email is being caught by your spam filter in Outlook, it will not be forwarded into Sonas.

• Access the email inbox that forwards into Sonas (e.g., events@yourvenue.com) in Outlook.
• Check the spam/junk folder for the missing email.
• If found, mark it as "Not Spam" to allow future emails to be forwarded correctly.

2. Verify the Forwarding Email Setup

Your incoming email address (e.g., events@yourvenue.com) must be set up to forward emails into Sonas. Ensure someone in your organisation has access to this mailbox in Outlook to check for issues. See How to Set Up Default Sonas Email for more information.

3. Ask the Customer to Try a Different Email Address

If the issue persists and you suspect it is on the customer's end, ask them to try sending from a different email address.

Blocking Unwanted or Repeated Emails

If you are receiving repeated or spam emails from a specific sender, you can block them in Outlook to prevent those emails from being forwarded into Sonas.

Updated on: 26/06/2026