Troubleshooting: Messages Not Delivering

When messages don't reach your members, it can disrupt billing reminders, onboarding flows, and general communication. This guide helps you diagnose and resolve the most common delivery issues.

Checking Message Delivery Status

Start by verifying whether the message was actually sent and what happened to it.

1. Navigate to Marketing > Communications from the left sidebar and open the History tab.
2. Use the search bar to find the specific message by recipient name, email, or phone number.
3. Check the status column for each message:

Status	Meaning
Sent	Message was accepted by the email/SMS provider
Delivered	Message was confirmed delivered to the recipient's inbox or phone
Opened	Recipient opened the email (email only, not always trackable)
Bounced	Email could not be delivered to the address
Failed	Message could not be sent due to a system or provider error
Unsubscribed	Recipient previously opted out of this message type

Click any message row to see detailed delivery information, including timestamps and error codes.

Email Bounce Handling

Bounces occur when an email cannot be delivered. GymPoint categorizes bounces as either soft or hard.

Soft bounces are temporary issues:

• Recipient's mailbox is full
• Email server is temporarily down
• Message was too large

GymPoint automatically retries soft bounces up to 3 times over 24 hours. No action is needed from you unless the problem persists.

Hard bounces are permanent failures:

• Email address doesn't exist
• Domain is invalid
• Recipient's server permanently rejected the message

To fix hard bounces:

1. Go to the member's profile.
2. Verify the email address is spelled correctly.
3. Contact the member to confirm their current email address.
4. Update the email address and resend the message.

GymPoint automatically marks addresses that hard bounce repeatedly. After 3 hard bounces, the address is flagged, and further sends are suppressed to protect your sender reputation.

SMS Delivery Issues

SMS messages can fail for several reasons:

• Invalid phone number — the number is not a valid mobile number or is formatted incorrectly.
• Carrier filtering — the member's carrier blocked the message as suspected spam.
• Unsubscribed — the member replied "STOP" to opt out of SMS.
• Insufficient SMS credits — your account has run out of SMS credits for the billing period.

To resolve SMS issues:

1. Verify the phone number on the member's profile includes the correct country code and area code.
2. Check Settings > Marketing > SMS for your remaining SMS credit balance.
3. If a member has unsubscribed, they must text "START" to your SMS number to re-opt in. You cannot manually override an SMS opt-out.
4. For carrier filtering, shorten your messages and avoid spam trigger words (see below).

Spam Filter Avoidance

If your emails are landing in spam folders, try these corrective steps:

Content improvements:

• Avoid ALL CAPS in subject lines
• Don't use excessive exclamation marks or special characters
• Limit the number of links in the email body
• Include a plain-text version alongside HTML emails
• Use a consistent "From" name and address

Technical improvements:

1. Verify your sender domain. Go to Settings > Email > Sending. Follow the steps to add SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records to your domain's DNS.
2. Authenticate your domain. Domain authentication tells receiving email servers that GymPoint is authorized to send email on your behalf. Without it, messages are more likely to be flagged as spam.
3. Warm up gradually. If you're sending from a new domain, start with small batches and increase volume over 2-4 weeks.

Verifying Sender Domain

Domain verification is the single most effective step for improving email deliverability.

To verify your domain:

1. Go to Settings > Email > Sending.
2. Click Verify Domain.
3. GymPoint generates DNS records (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) that you need to add to your domain's DNS configuration.
4. Log in to your domain registrar (GoDaddy, Cloudflare, Namecheap, etc.) and add the records.
5. Return to GymPoint and click Check Verification.
6. Verification can take up to 48 hours for DNS propagation, but usually completes within a few hours.

Once verified, your emails will be sent from your own domain rather than a shared sending domain, significantly improving deliverability and brand recognition.

When to Contact Support

If you've tried the steps above and messages are still not delivering, contact GymPoint support with:

• The recipient's email address or phone number
• The date and time you attempted to send
• The message status shown in the delivery log
• Screenshots of any error messages

Our support team can investigate provider-level delivery logs that aren't visible in the dashboard.