Headline: I put in all the e-mail information for my WordPress site, but I’m not getting the notifications for new users or comments. You need to configure the SMTP and the best way is to install a plugin to do that. I chose Configure SMTP.
Sometime back I moved my blog and recently I see that I’ve ignored quite a few people – real people, not just the usual spam. So I started to investigate why I was not getting the notifications I expected with the help of someone at my site provider.
It turns out that out of the box WordPress does not support SMTP mail by default. This is a great response on the WordPress Forums that pointed me in the right direction: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/where-to-setup-email-system
I chose Configure SMTP because 1) it seemed to have a long history (track record), 2) it was still up to date with the latest WordPress (maintained), and 3) it had a lot of stars. There are others out there, but I didn’t spend too much time. I’m quite pleased with my choice.