A customer reached out with a question on WooCommerce Subscriptions renewal notifications:
We received a complaint from a member who said he was not notified that his membership was about to renew. When I look in the logs, it shows an email went out at 30 days prior, but it was not opened. A second reminder was supposed to go out, but I don’t think it was.
They have been having ongoing issues with customers expressing surprise at the renewals. This was likely due to the annual renewal nature. We’d already set up AutomateWoo to send custom renewal reminders 30 days in advance — and thanks to WP Mail SMTP Pro with logging enabled, we were able to confirm that email did go out successfully.
But they also expected a 1-week reminder to go out — and that one was missing. Nothing in the logs.
So what happened?
WooCommerce Subscriptions added a built-in pre-renewal reminder feature in version 7.7.0 (November 2024). It was enabled in the Email settings, but not fully turned on — there’s a second checkbox in the WooCommerce > Settings > Subscriptions screen that needs to be checked to actually send the notices. That part was skipped:
We checked the box, gave it 7 days on the timing, and notified the customer of the issue and the problem was solved. Now their customers will get two notifications – One a month in advance, and a second 7 days before renewal.
Unfortunately we won’t be able to ensure their customers actually open either 🤷🏻♀️
Our Take
The WooCommerce built in reminders are certainly nice to have. They are simple, clean, and built in. But if you want more control over when and how these types of notifications go out, AutomateWoo is a much better solution, with a large set of filters and customizations. It does a whole lot more as well. If you’ve got the budget it’s one of our favorites. And don’t forget to set up WP Mail SMTP Pro for email logging… Solves a lot of the mystery on what emails are going out when.
This was a simple fix — for us. But it baffled the site owner, and these things are often invisible and frustrating. That’s why we do what we do.
Come aboard if you’d like the little things handled quietly, too.
Photo by Hugh Whyte on Unsplash
