Send WooCommerce order emails over SMTP

Order confirmations, payment receipts, shipping notices and password resets are the emails a store cannot afford to lose — and WooCommerce sends every one of them through WordPress's wp_mail(), which by default goes nowhere useful. This guide points those emails at Postwing and sets the sender up so they pass DMARC.

Why WooCommerce order emails fail

WooCommerce has no mail transport of its own. Everything it sends goes through wp_mail(), so it inherits WordPress's default behaviour: hand the message to PHP's mail(), which on most modern hosting has no mail server behind it. The order completes, the customer sees a thank-you page, and the confirmation never arrives.

Where a local mail server does exist, the message goes out unsigned from an IP your SPF record does not list — and an unauthenticated receipt from a shop is exactly the shape of a phishing email, so it gets filtered.

Step 1 — route WordPress through SMTP

Because WooCommerce uses wp_mail(), configuring SMTP once at the WordPress level covers the whole store. Follow the WordPress SMTP guide — WP Mail SMTP, FluentSMTP or the plugin-free phpmailer_init hook all work. There is no WooCommerce-specific plugin to install.

SMTP connection settings

Step 2 — set the store's sender address

Go to WooCommerce → Settings → Emails and set "From" address to an address on the domain you verified — for example orders@your-domain.com. This is the single setting that decides whether your receipts pass DMARC.

If a theme or a third-party plugin keeps overriding the sender, pin it with a filter:

/**
 * Force every WooCommerce email to send from your verified domain, whatever the
 * store settings or a third-party plugin says.
 */
add_filter( 'woocommerce_email_from_address', fn() => 'orders@your-domain.com', 99 );
add_filter( 'woocommerce_email_from_name', fn() => 'Acme Store', 99 );

To let staff reply straight to the customer while keeping the From: aligned, set Reply-To instead of changing the sender:

// Keep the From on your own domain, but send replies to the customer.
add_filter( 'woocommerce_email_headers', function ( $headers, $email_id, $order ) {
    if ( 'new_order' === $email_id && $order ) {
        $headers .= 'Reply-To: ' . $order->get_billing_email() . "\r\n";
    }
    return $headers;
}, 10, 3 );

Step 3 — check which emails are enabled

Still under WooCommerce → Settings → Emails, each notification is toggled separately and several are off by default. The ones customers notice:

Test and resend

Place a real test order rather than relying on the SMTP plugin's test button — that only proves the connection works, not that WooCommerce's triggers fire. To re-send an email for an existing order, use the Order actions box on the order screen, or WP-CLI:

# Re-trigger the "processing order" email for one order
wp eval "WC()->mailer()->emails['WC_Email_Customer_Processing_Order']->trigger( 4417 );"

# List every registered WooCommerce email class
wp eval "print_r( array_keys( WC()->mailer()->emails ) );"

Troubleshooting