Civimail is not sending scheduled mailings, could it be Cronjob syntax or Bluehost?

Question

Relevant set-up information:

• Hosting: Bluehost Shared Hosting
• CMS: WordPress
• CiviCRM version: 5.25.0

Here's what works:

1. Sending email from via "Contacts > New Mail"
2. Sending a test mail from "Settings - Outbound Mail"
3. Sending a test mail from a mailing in CiviMail under "Define Mailing" from the Preview pane

Here's what doesn't work:

1. Sending a scheduled mail via CiviMail's "Review and Schedule", neither in "Send Immediately" nor "Send at:";
2. Going to Schedule Jobs and hitting Execute Now for Sending Mail;

Now I'm told by the system that Cron jobs are not set up, though I have put one in CPANEL.

Here is my CRON command that is running every 5 minutes:

wget -O - -q -t 1 'https://<domain>/wp-content/plugins/civicrm/civicrm/bin/cron.php?name=<username>&pass=<password>&key=<sitekey>&job=execute'

The "username" is an Administrator.

Tech support says my Cron jobs are running. "Scheduled Jobs Log> Send Scheduled Mailings" states that jobs are getting kicked off

Entity: job Action: process_mailing
Summary
Finished execution of "Send Scheduled Mailings" with result: Success (a:1:{s:9:"processed";i:0;})
Details

Parameters parsed (and passed to API method): 
a:1:{s:7:"version";i:3;}

Full message: 
Finished execution of Send Scheduled Mailings with result: Success (a:1:{s:9:"processed";i:0;})

Despite all this, no mails are showing up in the test groups inboxes.

Is it my Cron job settings? If so, has anyone been able to set up cron jobs effectively in CPANEL for CiviCRM?

Answer 1

Success, with minor change in syntax I am now able to send schedule mail using Cron jobs to kick off schedule mails. Here is my method for running CiviCRM cron jobs on Bluehost shared hosting every 16 minutes. Previously I had also specified the the parameter job.execute, which I have removed.

wget -O - -q -t 1 'https://<my-domain>/wp-content/plugins/civicrm/civicrm/bin/cron.php?name=<username>&pass=<password>&key=<sitekey>'

I have scheduled 5 different mailing jobs at 15-60 minute intervals and each has delivered within 3 minutes of scheduled sending. Moreover, my Cron status is "Cron Running OK".

Bluehost does limit the frequency of cron jobs on shared hosting to between 16 and 25 minutes, so cron is kicking off as frequently as possible.

Answer 2

Welcome to SE! If it were working when you use 'Execute now' but not from cron, then I'd look at the cron settings. But in your case 'Execute now' is not producing mails and that does not involve cron.

=== edited ===

• Are you using Mosaico and Flexmailer - if so, which versions?
• What are your settings for outbound mail?
• At the place where you add recipient groups, how many recipients does it count?