WooCommerce Email notifications not getting sent is one of the most common problem users of this plugin face. We recently received a support request from a client about this issue. In his case, his customers were not receiving notifications of their orders.
In other cases, the site owner may be the one not getting notifications, or WooCommerce may not be sending email notifications at all.
I understand how frustrating this can be, so in this article, I will be walking you through the common problems that prevent your WooCommerce Plugin from sending emails, and how to resolve them.
There are quite a few causes of this problem. Some can be resolved very easily, others take a few more steps.
We will start with the easy steps. If these steps fix your issue, great, less reading for you.
Common Solutions for Email Notification Problems
- Check your WooCommerce Email setup.
- Check if your emails are going to Spam Folder.
- Use an email with a different domain as your recipient address.
- Use an SMTP Plugin.
Let’s take these steps one after the other.
Check your WooCommerce Email setup
When dealing with WooCommerce Email settings, the two major things you need to check are “Email sender options” and “Individual notification emails”.
Email Sender Options
To check for errors in your email sender settings:
Login to your WordPress Dashboard.
Place your mouse pointer over “WooCommerce” on the main menu and select “Settings”.
Click on the “Emails” tab.
Scroll down to see “Email Sender Options”. Next, ensure the “From” name and “From” address are properly set up.
From Name: This is used to specify the name you want people to see when they receive your email.
When setting up “From” name, do not use special characters such as “@/.&-”. Only use letters like “Fix Runner” as used in the picture above. If you currently use something like yourname@BusinessName, this could be the reason why your emails are not getting sent.
From Address: Check to see that your sender email address is correctly entered. If there are errors, make corrections. Finally, scroll down and click Save Changes.
Individual notification emails
Next, you want to make sure your notification emails are set up correctly.
The list of all notification emails can be seen in your emails tab (WooCommerce > Settings > Email).
Click on the email you are having problems with.
Check to see if the email is enabled. If it is not, enable it.
Next, check the recipient email address and ensure it is entered correctly.
Scroll down and click Save Changes.
Check if your emails are going to Spam Folder
Your WooCommerce email notifications may not be getting into people’s inboxes because they are going to Spam. If that’s the case, then it is likely because your web host IP address is blacklisted as a result of spamming by other users on the same IP.
To resolve this, you would need to contact your web host, explain the problem to them and try to see if they can fix it.
If your webhost is unable to resolve the issue, and you do not want to move to another host, then you would need to install an SMTP plugin. Please jump to the last step below to learn more about installing Gmail SMTP Plugin.
If you however choose to move your site to another host, we would highly recommend you use WP Engine. This WordPress hosting service uses very strong spam filters and high security standards, and so their servers are generally safe from email abuse.
Use an email with a different domain as your recipient address
In some cases, your notifications issue may be one sided. That is, your customers are getting notifications for their orders as expected, but you are not getting notifications of customer activities.
A number of WooCommerce users have reported that this issue came from using sender and recipient email addresses with the same domain.
For example, sender email is example@fixrunner.com and recipient is person@fixrunner.com. Both emails are on the fixrunner.com domain.
The easiest solution for this is to use an email with a different domain as your recipient email.
In your WordPress dashboard, go to WooCommerce > Settings
Click on the Emails tab.
Select the email notification you are trying to fix.
Change the recipient email address to another on a different domain.
Scroll down and click Save Changes.
Use an SMTP Plugin
If you have tried the steps above and still have issues with WooCommerce email notifications, then there is likely a problem in the email server on your web host. The best solution in this case would be to use an SMTP plugin.
WooCommerce sends emails with the wp_mail() WordPress function. WordPress in turn calls on PHP to send the email, and PHP calls on the server in your webhost.
If you install an SMTP plugin, the request will no longer go to your webhost email server which is causing your notification errors, but will go to your SMTP plugin and be queued to be sent out.
Please read our step by step guide on how to install Gmail SMTP plugin on your WordPress site.
Have you tried other solutions that resolved your issue with notifications? If yes, kindly share your knowledge with FixRunner readers.
