WooCommerce → Settings → Emails is where you find WooCommerce order confirmation email settings in WordPress admin. That screen lists every woocommerce email notification for customers and staff: subjects, headings, recipients, and the content below order details. Open an email name, or its edit icon, to change a woocommerce confirmation email without touching code. This guide maps which notification customers actually receive, how woocommerce email settings differ from template overrides, and how to confirm messages leave your store.
WooCommerce Emails settings screen with Processing order highlighted
WooCommerce Emails settings screen with Processing order highlighted
WooCommerce email notifications: which email does what
WooCommerce does not label one notification “Order confirmation.” The message customers think of as a confirmation is tied to an order status. That distinction matters because editing the wrong template leaves the actual customer email unchanged.
WooCommerce email notifications, recipients, and trigger points
Email
Goes to
Triggered when
New order
Admin
An order is placed and payment is recorded
Processing order
Customer
Payment succeeds and the order moves to Processing
Completed order
Customer
The order is marked Completed
Refunded order
Customer
A full or partial refund is created
Cancelled order
Admin
A paid or on-hold order is cancelled
Failed order
Admin
Payment fails and the order moves to Failed
New Order
New order is an internal alert, not a customer confirmation. It goes to the addresses in Recipient(s), which defaults to the store admin address, when WooCommerce records a new order and its payment state. Add multiple recipients as a comma-separated list. Customers do not receive this notification.
Processing order: the usual woocommerce confirmation email
For a typical physical-goods store, Processing order is the confirmation. WooCommerce sends it when the gateway confirms payment and moves the order to Processing: paid, now awaiting fulfilment. It normally includes the order number, line items, totals, and billing and shipping details.
Completed Order
Completed order goes to the customer when the order becomes Completed, usually after shipment or fulfilment. Downloadable and virtual products can complete automatically after payment. In a digital-only store, this may be the first customer email and therefore the effective confirmation.
Refunded Order
WooCommerce sends this to the customer after you issue a refund from the order screen. It uses different variants for partial and full refunds. Both identify the refunded amount so the customer can reconcile it with the original payment.
Cancelled Order
Cancelled order is an admin notification for an order that was Processing or On hold and is later cancelled. It surfaces manual and gateway-driven cancellations without requiring someone to watch the orders list. WooCommerce does not automatically send this notification to the customer.
Failed Order
Failed order is also for the admin. It fires when a payment attempt fails and WooCommerce sets the order to Failed. A sudden cluster deserves attention because it can point to a gateway, payment-method, or checkout configuration problem. Send it to an inbox your team monitors.
Note
Customers call the first post-payment message an order confirmation. In WooCommerce, that is usually Processing order for physical goods and Completed order for automatically completed digital goods. Confirm which notification your store uses before editing a template.
How to edit woocommerce confirmation email content
There are three sensible levels of customization: WooCommerce’s built-in fields, a template override in a child theme, and a visual email editor plugin. Start with the smallest intervention. Each extra layer adds maintenance work when WooCommerce changes.
WooCommerce email settings (built-in fields)
Open WooCommerce → Settings → Emails, select the notification, and use the settings form. For most stores, these fields are enough:
Enable this email notification
turns this notification on or off.
Recipient(s)
applies to admin emails. Customer emails use the billing address on the order.
Subject
supports placeholders including {site_title}, {order_number}, and {order_date}.
Email heading
the main heading inside the message body.
Additional content
appears below the order table. Use it for return guidance, VAT notes, or support hours.
Email type
choose HTML, plain text, or multipart.
Set shared branding at the bottom of the Emails screen: header image, footer text, base color, background color, and body text color. This applies across notifications, so it is a better place for brand-wide changes than individual templates.
WooCommerce customer email templates in your theme
When fields cannot express the change, override the template in a child theme. Do not edit WooCommerce plugin files. Plugin updates replace them without asking.
1Find the required source file in the source directory. The usual customer confirmation is customer-processing-order.php. Shared files include email-header.php, email-footer.php, and email-order-details.php.
2Create the destination directory in your child theme.
3Copy the required source file there with the same filename.
4Edit the child-theme copy, never the plugin original.
5Open WooCommerce > Status and review Templates. WooCommerce lists detected overrides and flags versions that no longer match the current plugin.
A PHP error in an override is not merely a layout issue. Email templates run in the order-completion flow. A fatal error can stop a notification and may interrupt the request that completes checkout. Make template changes on staging, then place a test order.
Email Customizer Plugins
Email customizer plugins replace WooCommerce markup with a visual editor. They can be practical when marketing owns the messages and nobody on the team maintains PHP. Their value is operational: rearranging blocks, adding banners, or changing merchandising content without a code deployment.
That convenience has a maintenance cost. The plugin becomes part of the path for every notification, its output must survive WooCommerce updates, and its hooks can collide with existing overrides. Use one when built-in settings and a focused override are insufficient. Keep the stack small and test after every relevant update.
How to Preview an Email Without Placing an Order
Use WooCommerce’s preview to inspect a notification before creating a test order. It renders the template with sample data, making it useful for quick reviews of subject lines, headings, content, and branding.
1Go to WooCommerce > Settings > Emails.
2Open the preview for the relevant notification. Depending on your WooCommerce version, this is an eye icon in the row or a Preview button at the top.
3Review the rendered message. It uses placeholder order data rather than a real order.
4Update the subject, heading, additional content, or colors. Save, then reload the preview.
Preview proves presentation, not delivery. It does not send through your mail server, exercise SPF or DKIM, or encounter the recipient’s spam filtering. A message can look correct in preview and still fail to arrive.
Verifying Order Confirmation Emails Actually Arrive
Correct settings and a clean preview do not establish delivery. After a template change, verify that a real message leaves the sending system and reaches a real inbox. Most failures fall into three categories:
Sending method
WordPress defaults to PHP mail(), which is often rejected or filtered because it lacks authentication. SMTP or a transactional provider with SPF and DKIM configured for the sending domain addresses many delivery problems.
The email never triggers
If the order does not reach the status bound to the notification, nothing is sent. An order stuck at Pending payment does not produce a Processing order email. The notification may also be disabled.
A broken template or hook
A PHP error in a theme override or email-related snippet can stop the send, often without a useful customer-facing signal.
There is another reason to test after editing templates. Email code runs during order completion. A broken template can affect checkout itself, and a checkout that fails at the final step creates neither an order nor an email.
ShopMonitor runs scheduled browser checkouts and verifies that the thank-you, or order-received, page is reached. On a failed run, it provides screenshots and step-level errors. ShopMonitor checks the browser checkout and thank-you path only. It never verifies inbox arrival or email delivery, which require a separate check.
Configuration, rendering, and delivery are separate facts. Only a real message in a real inbox proves arrival.
Catch Broken Checkouts Before Customers Do
ShopMonitor runs automated browser checkout and form tests each day, then alerts you when a path breaks. No code changes. No plugins. Setup in 5 minutes.
Open WooCommerce → Settings → Emails in WordPress admin. That screen lists woocommerce email notifications for customers and staff. For physical-goods stores, the customer-facing woocommerce confirmation email is usually Processing order. Open that row to edit subject, heading, additional content, and enablement. Global branding fields at the bottom of the same screen apply across templates.
It is usually Processing order or Completed order, depending on the order workflow. Physical-goods stores generally send Processing order after payment. Stores selling downloadable or virtual products may complete the order automatically, which makes Completed order the first customer message. New order is an internal admin notification, not a customer confirmation.
For most changes, open the notification under WooCommerce > Settings > Emails and edit Subject, Email heading, and Additional content. These fields support placeholders including {order_number} and {site_title}. For structural changes, copy the matching file from woocommerce/templates/emails/ into your-child-theme/woocommerce/emails/ and edit that copy. Plugin updates overwrite files in the WooCommerce directory.
Yes. WooCommerce offers a preview on the Emails screen, either as an eye icon in the notification row or a Preview button depending on your version. It renders the template with sample order data. The preview shows layout and content only. It does not send a message, so it cannot test the mail server or the recipient’s spam filtering.
Typical causes are unauthenticated PHP mail() sending, an order that never reaches the notification’s status, a disabled notification, an incorrect admin recipient address, or a PHP error in an override. Check those in order. The full checklist is in order confirmation email not sending.
About the author
Written by Winning Solutions, the team behind ShopMonitor. We help WooCommerce teams navigate confirmation email settings, change templates safely, and identify checkout failures before they become a customer problem.
Where to Find WooCommerce Confirmation Email Settings | ShopMonitor
