Why you aren't receiving emails
If you or your speakers, sponsors, exhibitors, submitters or portal users are not receiving emails sent from Sessionboard, this article covers the most common causes and fixes based on real support cases.
Every automated and admin-created email, including password resets and portal invitations, is sent from no-reply@notify.sessionboard.com unless your organization has the Custom Email Domain add-on. That is the address to search for and to allowlist. A few organizations send from no-reply@eu.notify.sessionboard.com instead, so searching for notify.sessionboard.com finds both.
Quick checks for one contact who reports nothing arriving:
- Ask them to look in spam, junk and quarantine for
no-reply@notify.sessionboard.com. - Open their contact record and confirm the Email field is the address they are watching.
- Ask their IT team to allowlist the sending address and IPs listed below.
The sections that follow cover each cause in detail.
History shows the email was sent, but it never arrived
Section titled “History shows the email was sent, but it never arrived”Symptoms
Section titled “Symptoms”Admin sends an email or a test to themselves, History shows it as sent, but it does not appear in the inbox. Often it fails to arrive at both a work and a personal address.
Why it happens
Section titled “Why it happens”A record in History means Sessionboard handed the message to our email provider successfully. Anything after that point is handled by the receiving mail server, so the message is almost always being filtered, quarantined, or delayed on the recipient side rather than lost in Sessionboard.
- Confirm the send actually happened: go to History > Emails and search for the recipient.
- Check the spam, junk, quarantine, and Other/Clutter folders, including any email protection service your organization uses (Outlook Protection, Mimecast, Cisco IronPort, Proofpoint).
- Search the mailbox for
no-reply@notify.sessionboard.com, or for your custom domain address if you have the Custom Email Domain add-on. - Send a test to an address on a different provider (for example a personal Gmail) to confirm where the block is.
- Have your IT team, and/or the recipient’s IT team, allowlist Sessionboard’s sending IP addresses. This is the fix in most cases where an email shows as sent but never arrives:
159.183.10.230159.183.207.219159.183.47.254
- Resend the email once the IPs are allowlisted and confirm it arrives. For full allowlisting detail, see Emails are landing in spam or being blocked by a corporate filter.
Emails are landing in spam or being blocked by a corporate filter
Section titled “Emails are landing in spam or being blocked by a corporate filter”Symptoms
Section titled “Symptoms”Emails arrive at personal addresses but get caught by your organization’s spam filter. Universities, government agencies, hospitals, and other institutions with strict filtering are the most common blockers.
Why it happens
Section titled “Why it happens”Sessionboard sends all email through SendGrid, from Sessionboard’s sending IP addresses. Strict recipient filters may quarantine or block that mail even when the message and the sender are legitimate. This applies whether you send from no-reply@notify.sessionboard.com or from a custom email domain.
- Ask your IT team, and your speakers’ IT teams, to allowlist the following sending IP addresses:
159.183.10.230159.183.207.219159.183.47.254
- Also allowlist the sending address:
no-reply@notify.sessionboard.com, or your custom domain address if you have the Custom Email Domain add-on. - Send a test to one affected recipient after the allowlist is in place to confirm the change worked.
- Allowlisting is per organization. Each blocking organization needs to do it on their own mail server, and allowlisting by one organization does not carry over to another.
If recipients still do not receive email after the IPs are allowlisted, contact support@sessionboard.com with the affected addresses and the send time.
The email address on the contact record is wrong
Section titled “The email address on the contact record is wrong”Symptoms
Section titled “Symptoms”One specific person never receives anything while everyone else on the same send does.
Why it happens
Section titled “Why it happens”A typo in the address, most often a wrong or extra character in the domain. These sends usually appear as delivered or bounced in History depending on whether the domain exists.
- Open the contact record and check the Email field character by character.
- Correct the address and confirm the Portal Username field also reflects the address the person expects to receive email at. See Updating a Contact’s Email Address vs. Portal Username.
- Check for a duplicate contact record holding the old address. See How to Merge Duplicate Contacts.
- Resend the email.
Portal emails go to a different address than the one on the record
Section titled “Portal emails go to a different address than the one on the record”Symptoms
Section titled “Symptoms”The Email field on the profile is correct, but portal access and portal notifications use a different address.
Why it happens
Section titled “Why it happens”In Sessionboard the Email field and the Portal Username are separate fields. Portal access and portal notifications follow the Portal Username, so updating only the Email field leaves the old address in place.
- Open the contact record and scroll to the Portal Username field at the bottom.
- Update it to match the address the person uses.
- Make sure there are no duplicate records with similar names or email addresses.
- Resend the portal invitation.
- For full detail on how these two fields interact, see Updating a Contact’s Email Address vs. Portal Username.
Emails are bouncing
Section titled “Emails are bouncing”Symptoms
Section titled “Symptoms”History shows bounce errors for some or all recipients at a given company.
Why it happens
Section titled “Why it happens”A bounce is an explicit rejection from the receiving server. Common causes are an address that no longer exists, a full mailbox, or a recipient server rejecting the sending reputation or the message content.
- Read the reason the receiving server returned: go to History > Emails > Email Campaigns, click the email’s subject, then View Recipients. The Reason column sits next to each recipient’s Status.
- If the reason is an unknown or invalid recipient, correct the address on the contact record.
- If the reason references a block, a blocklist, or a policy rejection, the recipient’s server is refusing the message. Ask their IT team to allowlist Sessionboard’s sending IP addresses.
- If the issue persists after allowing the IPs on the bounced address email, contact support@sessionboard.com with the domain and a screenshot of the bounce so we can investigate with our email provider.
An address that bounces is blocked from future campaigns for that event. Once you have fixed the cause, clear the block from Email Campaigns > Settings > Suppression List so the address can receive campaigns again. See Suppression list.
One person is skipped on every campaign
Section titled “One person is skipped on every campaign”Symptoms
Section titled “Symptoms”Campaign run history reports fewer recipients than you selected, and the same person is missing every time even though their address is correct and other people at the same company receive the email.
Why it happens
Section titled “Why it happens”When mail to an address fails, Sessionboard blocks that address so later campaigns skip it. The block stays until you clear it, so a problem that has since been fixed can keep someone off every send.
- Go to Email Campaigns, click Settings, then Suppression List.
- Search for the address and read the Why it’s blocked column. Bounced means the receiving server rejected that person; Send failure means an entire message was rejected before sending and nobody received it.
- Fix the underlying cause — correct the address for a bounce, or resolve the sending-domain or sender-identity problem for a send failure.
- Click Clear block and confirm. The address can receive campaigns again on the next send.
- Full detail on both causes: Suppression list.
Portal invitations were never received
Section titled “Portal invitations were never received”Symptoms
Section titled “Symptoms”The most common cause is a portal mismatch. Notifications are configured per portal, so if the contact is assigned to a different portal than the one you configured notifications on, they will not receive anything. Portal assignment is driven by portal filters rather than session assignment, so a contact can easily sit in a different portal than you expect.
- Check which portal the contact is actually assigned to:
- Go to Contacts.
- Click Columns, add Assigned Portal, then Apply Changes.
- Find the contact and note the portal listed.
- Go to Portal settings, make sure their assigned portal has notifications ON for tasks or summaries.
- Confirm notifications are switched on for that portal. Email Notifications and the Weekly Digest are enabled or disabled per portal, so a contact in a portal with notifications off will never be emailed. If only the weekly digest is missing, check whether the digest was turned off for that contact: add the Weekly Digest Emails Off column in Contacts.
- Check the email address on the contact record for typos, and verify the Portal Username matches the address the person uses: Updating a Contact’s Email Address vs. Portal Username
- Confirm the invitation was sent: History > Emails, then search for the contact.
- Ask the user to check spam and junk for
no-reply@notify.sessionboard.com. If they are on a corporate address, have their IT team allowlist Sessionboard’s sending IP addresses. - Resend the invitation. See Inviting Users To The Event Portal.
For other portal access problems, see 6 Common Speaker Portal Issues (and How to Fix Them).
No email after a time or room change
Section titled “No email after a time or room change”Symptoms
Section titled “Symptoms”You moved a session on the agenda, or edited start time, end time, or location, and the speakers on that session received no email.
Why it happens
Section titled “Why it happens”Start time, end time, and location emails go out even when those fields are hidden on the portal. The usual miss is the portal toggle, not Manage Fields.
The person who saved is never emailed. Contacts on the Default People Portal need the toggle on that portal, not only on a custom Speakers portal.
- On Configuration, turn on Submission change notifications and click Save and Next. Repeat for the Default People Portal if those contacts live there.
- Confirm the recipient is a different portal user than the person who saved, then wait about two minutes — rapid edits combine into one email.
- Work through the full checklist on Notify speakers of submission changes.
Still having issues?
Section titled “Still having issues?”Contact support@sessionboard.com with:
- Event name
- The recipient email address or addresses affected
- The date and time of the send
- The email or template name
- A screenshot of the bounce or error, if you have one
- What steps you have already tried
Frequently asked questions
Section titled “Frequently asked questions”How do I see whether someone opened or clicked an email?
Open the person’s contact record, go to the Activity tab and choose Communications. Each email is listed with its latest status, such as Delivered, Opened, Clicked or Bounced.
Open tracking can be turned off for an organization, and some mail apps block it. A missing Opened therefore does not mean the email never arrived: Delivered is the status that confirms the receiving server accepted it.