WooCommerce emails not working

Why it happens

PHP mail is being dropped. WordPress sends mail through the server’s PHP mail function by default. Most hosting providers rate-limit or silently discard it because spammers abuse it. The email “sends” from WooCommerce’s point of view and never arrives.

No SMTP, or broken SMTP. Stores that installed an SMTP plugin months ago and changed hosting passwords since: the stored credentials stopped working, and order emails fail without any visible error in the shop.

The email is spam-foldered. Mail that arrives, but in spam: missing SPF, DKIM and DMARC records for the sending domain. Customers see “payment received” from their bank and nothing from the store.

Plugin collisions. Multiple plugins claiming email duty (an SMTP plugin, a marketing plugin, a booking plugin) hook the same mail events; one failure mode is duplicate sends, the uglier one is none.

Triage

Install nothing yet: go to WooCommerce > Status and scroll to the email failure log if your version shows one. Send the test email from the Status page. If it fails or never arrives, install one reputable SMTP plugin, connect a real mailbox (not a free alias), and send again. Then check the domain’s SPF/DKIM/DMARC records with a free email authentication checker, and fix the missing ones at your DNS host. Order the customer a manual resend from the order screen meanwhile, they are waiting.

When to bring us in

If emails fail after SMTP is correctly configured, if you need deliverability fixed properly (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, warm sending, logged and monitored), or if order emails stopping has already cost you reviews and disputes, that is a same-day WordPress emergency for us. Email deliverability is infrastructure, not a plugin slot machine: we set it up once, documented, monitored.