Are your customers not receiving emails from your store? This can affect both your Lead Capture emails (such as registration and approval notices) and your WooCommerce order confirmation emails (new order, processing, and completed order emails), including those for wholesale orders.
Email deliverability can be affected in a variety of ways. Please go through the following troubleshooting steps and contact support if further assistance is required.
1. Check the email is turned on and sent to the right address
If a specific email is not arriving at all, first confirm it is enabled and addressed correctly.
For order confirmation emails, go to WooCommerce > Settings > Emails and open the relevant email (for example New order, Processing order, or Completed order). Check that the email is enabled and that the recipient address is correct. New order emails go to the admin recipient you set here, while processing and completed order emails go to the customer.
For Lead Capture emails, check WooCommerce > Settings > Lead Capture tab > Emails settings page and confirm the email you expect is enabled.
2. Customise the subject lines and email content
Some providers are more sensitive than others and use different filters and rules to mark an email as spam. The content of your email could be triggering spam filters on the receiver’s email service, which would cause the emails to be blocked before they even reach the account. This happens a lot on big email providers like Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo, who are very sophisticated about how spam is handled.
Try changing the subject on your emails. For Lead Capture emails you can do this under WooCommerce > Settings > Lead Capture tab > Emails, and for order emails under WooCommerce > Settings > Emails.
Suggestion: Instead of the default “Registration Approved” try something more specific and less likely to trigger a spam filter, such as “Your wholesale registration was approved on XYZ Store”. Also alter the body content of the emails to make them more specific to your store and less standardised.
3. Ensure your domain is allowed to send emails from that FROM address
If you are routinely experiencing email deliverability issues but it seems random (for example, it is a problem for some users but not others) then it is likely not related to your WordPress or WooCommerce installation, but more to do with your domain. You are likely experiencing a policy based rejection.
To fix this, the email address you are sending FROM (as set in both Settings > General and WooCommerce > Settings > Emails tab) must be allowed to send from your domain. This means if you have a yahoo.com email address in those settings, it is likely that the receiving server is checking against your domain to see if it is allowed to send on behalf of yahoo.com (which it is not).
Suggestion: Try the following, which should enhance the reputation of your domain and avoid most policy based rejections.
- Set up an email account on your domain, for example [email protected], which will serve as the FROM address for all your website’s emails. Set this address under Settings > General and also as the From address under WooCommerce > Settings > Emails tab.
- Contact a web developer or your web host to ask what the proper DKIM, SPF, and DMARC settings should be on your domain to ensure email deliverability.
See here for more information about policy based rejections.
4. Try using an SMTP server for sending emails instead
If the above tips don’t get the emails flowing, then it might be possible to switch to using an SMTP server for sending your emails instead. This can be done by using SMTP via your web host (contact your host about sending emails via SMTP with your hosting account) or via a transactional email sending service like SendGrid, Mandrill, or MailGun. Transactional API based services are generally better for large stores to ensure enhanced deliverability.
Click here to read about how to enable SMTP sending on your WordPress installation.
Still experiencing issues with email deliverability?
Please ensure you have tried all of the above troubleshooting steps before contacting support. If you are still experiencing trouble, please get in touch and we will do our best to help you diagnose the issue.
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