Email troubleshooting

In some cases, issues can arise that prevent your WooCommerce store from sending emails, or your shoppers from receiving them. This guide aims to tackle common email problems related to WooCommerce stores, with clear steps to diagnose and resolve these issues.

By default, WooCommerce sends mail using the wp_mail() function, a core function of WordPress. This means that in many cases, if email is not being sent, then the issue is not with WooCommerce itself generating the email, but with the core email function on your web host — or another step in the process.

Often, email issues are deliverability issues, where your server is sending the email, but it’s not being received.

Whatever the cause, having email delivery issues with your WooCommerce store can be frustrating for both you and your customers.

Related documents for additional reference:

• How email works, and SMTP providers
• Email authentication and sender requirements

First, double-check that an email should be getting sent, before proceeding to more complex troubleshooting. 

Check whether you’re seeing one of the common cases below:

• If orders haven’t been paid and are still in the Pending Payment status, no email will be triggered.
• If the relevant email is disabled in your email settings, no email will be sent.

If your new orders have a Pending Payment status, no email will be sent.

The payment wasn’t successful

Pending Payment orders can occur when the payment process isn’t completed successfully. These can be orders where the customer selected to place their order but abandoned the external payment page (e.g. PayPal) or had their credit card transaction declined. The exact behavior varies depending on the payment gateway attempted for the order.

If payment was successful

If you have orders with the Pending Payment status and you have received payment for them, this means orders are not being updated. This could indicate that the payment gateway is having trouble communicating with your site. In this case, you are not looking at an email issue; you are looking at an issue with your payment gateway. Review your payment gateway’s documentation for troubleshooting steps, and contact their support team if necessary. 

Note: If you are still using the deprecated, unsupported PayPal Standard payment gateway and encounter successful PayPal payments that do not accurately change the order status, please review our PayPal Standard troubleshooting page for help.

An error prevented the order status change

During order processing, it’s possible for a conflict with your theme, custom code, or another plugin on your site to produce an error before the order status change occurs. If an error prevents the order status change, no email will be sent.

If you see this happening on your site, to find out what may be causing it, you can:

• Check WooCommerce logs for fatal errors.
• Rule out conflicts by disabling plugins/themes other than WooCommerce itself and a default theme, and trying to replicate the issue in a default state.

Orders that are successfully updated to Processing status should generate an email if the email notification is enabled in your WooCommerce email settings.

To check whether emails are enabled:

• Navigate to your site’s admin area.
• Visit WooCommerce > Settings > Emails.
• Select the relevant email template. 
• Ensure the “Enable this email notification” box is ticked for order notifications 
• If the email is enabled, but not being sent. This is likely the result of a conflict. To find out what may be causing this, you can:
  • Check WooCommerce logs for fatal errors
  • Rule out conflicts by disabling plugins/themes other than WooCommerce itself and a default theme, and trying to replicate the issue in a default state.

If emails are enabled and paid orders are correctly updated to the Processing status, there could be an issue delivering the email. This could mean a spam blocker has classified your emails as spam and stopped them. First, check whether the site is indeed generating and sending the email.

Installing a mail logging plugin like WP Mail Logging can help verify this. This will log all outgoing emails from your WordPress site, so you can see what is being sent.

Once installed:

• Generate a test order.
• Navigate to your site’s admin area and visit > WP Mail Log
• Check the log to verify that your test order generated an email.
• Check the log to determine if there are any sending errors reported.

After an email is successfully sent, your email logs should look something like this:

If the email was sent, but not received, there are a few steps that can be taken:

• Make sure you’re using an email address that matches your site’s domain in the “From” Address field in WooCommerce > Settings >Emails.
  • Using your @gmail.com, @yahoo.com (or similar) public domain email address is likely to cause emails to land in spam folders or be blocked due to a mismatch between the declared sender (servers of Gmail, Yahoo, etc.) and the actual sender (your server).
  • If your personal email is being used as the “From” Address, update this field with a registered email address that uses your website’s domain name.
• Sign up for an account with a dedicated SMTP provider that will send the email for you. An average site can usually stay within free usage. This will be more reliable than your own server’s mail-sending function.
• Check whether your site’s emails have proper authentication in place. This can prevent your emails from being spam-filtered.

If the email was not sent or logged, this could indicate a conflict is preventing your site from creating emails.

To find out what may be causing this, you can:

• Check WooCommerce logs for fatal errors.
• Rule out conflicts by disabling plugins/themes other than WooCommerce itself and a default theme, and trying to replicate the issue in a default state.

If other WooCommerce emails such as password reset emails or admin emails are not being sent or received, you can follow these same steps to troubleshoot what might be causing this.

Do you still have questions and need assistance? 

• If you’re looking to extend the core functionality shown here, we recommend reviewing available extensions in the WooCommerce Marketplace.
• Need ongoing advanced support or a customization built for WooCommerce? Hire a Woo Agency Partner.
• Are you a developer building your own WooCommerce integration or extension? Check our Developer Resources.

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