Yes, the “enable RSVP email notifications” setting is activated.

re: webserver. No idea, not my server. Question: I’m sending this to a gmail account…does that even come into play? If so, what questions/information do I need to ask/give the person who owns the webhosting service?

thanks!

Now using WP Mail in EME settings. Web hosting person made some changes on his end as BlueHost doesn’t like the settings for SMTP

Partial succcess is that the person RSVPing to the event is now getting a confirmation email!
But not the contact person who really needs to get the RSVP…that’s the last link in this chain. Thoughts?

With this testing period, I would be the contact person, and no I am not receiving them, nor are they in my spam folder.

So, for settings (to go through them), I have:
(under the RSVP tab)
Default contact person: me

(under the Mail tab)
enable RSVP email notifications: yes
Contact person email format: #_RESPNAME (#_RESPEMAIL) will attend #_EVENTNAME on #m #d, #Y. He wants to reserve #_SPACES space(s).
Now there are #_RESERVEDSPACES space(s) reserved, #_AVAILABLESPACES are still available.

Yours faithfully,
Events Manager

notification sender address: my email address
mail sending method: PHP Mail function
SMTP username: my email
SMTP password: my email password

I can ask the webhost contact to check the mail logs (I cannot do that as I don’t have access to that account). Just stumped that all is working but this very important bit

well, this is interesting (to me – remember, I’m coming in to this problem in the middle).
Evidently the client HAS been receiving all of the test reservations over the last 24 hours! So, what you’re saying is that whomever set up the Event originally will receive the RSVP, correct? Which would be why my changing the settings wouldn’t affect reservations made to existing events.

FTR, what I noted to the web host master was:
One workaround: (from http://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-send-email-in-wordpress-using-the-gmail-smtp-server/)

(If I might interject, I actually found there are more steps required if you are using some shared hosts like Bluehost.)

If you have installed the plugin and followed the directions above and still don’t receive emails, you might try the following steps. I’m not sure on how all the technical pieces work so my explanation may not be top notch… but I know that these steps work since I use them on 20+ wordpress installations on bluehost accounts:

1. Log into your cPanel account and create an email account that matches your google apps email address (I know… it seems strange since you are not going to use it, but this step will essentially trick the server into believing you are sending the email through the same server)

2. Then in the cPanel account find your MX records and change the MX routing from automatic to “Remote”… it may be a little trickier to find now since they upgraded some UI functions inside cPanel but look for a small link next to MX that says “Email Routing: Remote Mail Exchanger more »”

3. Log back into your wordpress site and send a test email through the WP Mail SMTP plugin

Hope that works for you. This solution took me months of trial and error, literally hundreds of hours with tech support and outsourcing consultants, and a lot of caffeine and cursing. But I can now have forms like gravity forms on a wordpress installation on bluehost send an email to a google apps email address.

also: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/smtp-error-failed-to-connect-to-server-connection-timed-out-110