WildApricot Email Deliverability Issues

November 29, 2026

Email Deliverability Issues Reported by WildApricot Users

For years, WildApricot administrators have reported recurring issues with outgoing email—especially when sending announcements, newsletters, and event reminders to their members. These issues can affect how reliably members receive messages, and in many cases, clubs only discover the problem when their members complain about not getting emails.

Commonly Reported Problems

1. Emails blocked or rejected by major email providers

One WildApricot customer wrote:

Emails are being blocked from Yahoo, Bellsouth and AOL, saying "server error authenticate" with either SPF or DKIM needed.

Authentication failures usually mean that the sending server has not been properly configured to comply with modern email security requirements—namely SPF, DKIM, and increasingly DMARC. When these records are missing or misconfigured, major providers often block or silently discard bulk emails.

This is not an isolated complaint. Numerous admins across the WildApricot user community have reported similar authentication-related rejections.

For clubs that rely on timely email communication, even occasional blocking can significantly impact event attendance, renewals, and general engagement.

2. Long delays in the email queue

Another WildApricot user reported:

Also the email queue lengths have also been getting longer. Sometimes up to 10 hours.

Even when emails are not being rejected outright, they may sit in a queue for hours before being sent. That means time-sensitive announcements—such as last-minute event updates, weather changes, or renewal reminders—may not reach members until long after they’re relevant.

Admins have documented queue delays repeatedly over the years, indicating an ongoing and unresolved infrastructure issue.

A Persistent Issue Over Multiple Years

Based on user-reported incidents, these deliverability and queue-delay problems have been occurring consistently for at least two years—likely longer. Some examples include:

Issues reported in 2020 about email deliverability and queue failures
Multiple complaints in May 2023 and September 2023
New complaints continuing into 2025, including November 2025

Relevant discussion threads and reports from WildApricot’s official forums and user groups:

These issues have never been fully resolved, and many clubs have adopted workarounds—such as sending emails from Mailchimp, Constant Contact, or personal Gmail accounts—just to reliably reach their members.

Third-Party Guidance Underscores the Problem

Stellastra, a well-known WildApricot consultant, published a comprehensive article with troubleshooting steps for common WildApricot email deliverability problems:

https://stellastra.com/how-to-stop-wildapricot-personify-emails-going-to-spam/

The need for such an article highlights how widespread and persistent the problem is. While some admins have been able to reduce failures with manual DNS work, others continue to struggle with blocked or delayed mail.

How GroupFlow Addresses This Problem

GroupFlow was built after seeing these same challenges in real-world clubs. Because of this, email deliverability was treated as a core requirement from day one—not an afterthought.

Reliable, Authenticated Email Delivery

Fully authenticated sending using SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
Compatible with Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft, and other major providers, including their updated 2024+ security requirements.
No long queues. GroupFlow processes and sends emails immediately, without hours-long backlogs.
Proven reliability across tens of thousands of messages sent annually by clubs using Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, AppleMail, and others.

Many clubs switch to GroupFlow specifically because their members aren’t receiving emails. Reliable communication is essential for running a club—without it, event attendance drops, renewals decline, and members disengage.

If your club has been battling deliverability issues for months or years, you don’t have to keep working around the system.