Email Not Sending

Email Not Sending

Email is the silent backbone of every TrailerBase account. When it stops working, reservations slow down and renters panic. Here is how to get it back on track.

Step 1: Re-Authorize Gmail

If you connected a Gmail account to send from your own address, Google expires the OAuth grant every 6 months for security. When that happens, TrailerBase cannot send through your Gmail until you re-authorize.

Go to Settings > Integrations > Email and look for a yellow banner on the Gmail row. Click Re-authorize, sign in to Google again, and approve the scopes. Sending resumes within a minute.

Step 2: There Is No Secondary Fallback

TrailerBase sends all transactional email through a single Gmail OAuth connection — there is no secondary fallback provider. If Gmail sending is down or unauthorized (see Step 1), email is logged but not delivered, so restoring the Gmail connection is the priority. You can confirm sending health with a test send (Step 6 below).

Step 3: Check Spam and Promotions

Your email might be delivering just fine — it is just landing in the wrong folder. Ask the renter to check their Spam, Promotions, and Updates folders. In our testing, about 5% of trailer-rental emails land in Gmail Promotions by default.

You can improve this long-term by adding SPF and DKIM records to your custom domain.

Step 4: Add SPF and DKIM for Custom Domains

If you send from yourbusiness.com instead of a gmail.com address, mail providers want to verify that TrailerBase is allowed to send on your behalf. Two DNS records make this happen:

• SPF — A TXT record naming the services allowed to send as your domain.
• DKIM — A TXT record with a public key used to cryptographically sign each message.

In Settings > Email > Custom Domain, TrailerBase shows you the exact records to add. Drop them in your DNS provider (GoDaddy, Cloudflare, Namecheap, etc.), wait 15-30 minutes for propagation, and click Verify. Once green, your deliverability typically jumps 20-40%.

Step 5: Verify the Renter's Email Is Valid

Sometimes the email is going out, and it is just bouncing. Check the renter's address for typos: gmil.com instead of gmail.com, yaho.com instead of yahoo.com, missing dots, spaces at the end. In the renter's profile, an invalid address shows a red warning icon.

Fix the address and resend the relevant email from the reservation's activity feed.

Step 6: Test-Send to Yourself

To prove the full pipeline works end-to-end, send a test email to your own inbox. In Settings > Email, click Send Test. If that lands, TrailerBase is working; the issue is specific to the renter's address or inbox.

Still Stuck?

If tests fail, email [email protected] with the message ID (visible in any message's detail view) and we can look up the full delivery log.