Subscriptions app Customer Notification Emails

Essential Subscriptions automatically emails your customers about important subscription events: upcoming charges, confirmations, pauses, cancellations, and payment problems. The important ones are on by default, and you can edit the wording of each.

To manage them, go to Settings and click Email notifications to customers to expand the list.

The Email Types

Email	When it's sent	On by default
Upcoming subscription charge reminder	Before a subscription payment is due	✓
New subscription	When a subscription is created at checkout. For subscriptions you create yourself, see the note below	✓
Subscription order skipped	When a customer skips an order	✓
Subscription paused	When a subscription is paused	✓
Subscription resumed	When a subscription is resumed	✓
Subscription cancelled	When a subscription is cancelled	✓
Payment failure (1st attempt)	After the first payment attempt fails	✓
Payment failure (Retrying)	After a failed retry attempt	✓
Payment failure before last attempt	After the second to last retry fails. Nothing is sent after the final attempt	✓

When you create a subscription for a customer yourself, on the Create subscription page, the New subscription email is only sent if you tick Send new subscription confirmation email. The box is unticked by default, and it decides for that subscription whatever the setting here says. See How to Create a Subscription for a Customer Manually.

Three things about this list are worth knowing before a customer asks:

Nothing is sent after the final failed attempt. The last thing the customer hears about the payment is the before last attempt email. After that they get the paused or cancelled email instead.
Orders that fail because a product is out of stock send no payment failure email. While the stock retries run, the customer gets Subscription order skipped for each order that is skipped. When the retries run out, they get Subscription paused or Subscription cancelled. Each one only if that email is on.
There is a tenth email the app sends that is not in this list and cannot be switched off: Action required to complete your subscription payment, when a customer's bank asks for extra verification. Without it the charge cannot go through.

The full failure sequence is in When Customers Are Charged, and What Happens When a Payment Fails.

Turning an Email On or Off

In Settings, click Email notifications to customers to expand it. The summary line shows how many are currently on (e.g. 7 out of 9 on). Each email has an On or Off badge. Click Disable or Enable next to it. The change is saved straight away.

You can also switch an email on or off inside its editor, with the Enable checkbox at the top. That one is saved when you click Save.

Editing an Email

Click an email to open its editor. A live preview of the email is shown on the right as you type. You can customise:

Subject: the email subject line.
Heading and Content: the main message body.
Button text: the labels on the email's buttons. Every email has Manage subscription button text. New subscription also has View your order button text. The three payment failure emails also have Update payment method button text.
Order summary labels: the wording for Subtotal, Shipping, Duties, Taxes, and Total.
Customer information labels: the wording for Shipping address, Billing address, Payment, and Shipping method.
Footer text: a custom footer.

The Order summary and Customer information cards are not shown for Subscription order skipped, Subscription paused and Subscription cancelled, because those emails have no order details.

Click Reset to defaults at any time to restore the original wording. It refills the fields, and you still need to Save.

Variables

Click the {} button beside a field to insert a value that is filled in when the email is sent, such as the customer name, your shop name, the billing interval, the next charge date or the order total. The list shown is the one that applies to that email.

Note: A variable you type by hand that is not on the list is sent to the customer exactly as written, brackets and all. Use the {} button rather than typing.

Translations

If your store has more than one language, each email editor has a Translations card. Click Add translation, pick a language, and translate the wording. Customers are emailed in their own language where you have provided it.

Charge reminder timing

The Upcoming subscription charge reminder has an extra setting, Send reminder email, which controls how many days ahead of the charge the email is sent. You can set 1 to 30 days. The default is 1 day.

Sending a Test Email

Each email editor has a Send test email button. Three things to expect:

The test goes to your store email address, not to the address of whoever clicks it.
The subject is prefixed with [TEST] and the content uses sample data, not a real subscription.
It sends your saved settings, so save your edits before testing them.

Saving Changes

When you edit an email, a save bar appears at the top. Click Save to keep your changes or Discard to undo them.

To change the button and text colours in your emails, go to Settings and Email template customisation. You can set the primary button, the secondary button and links, and two text colours. You can also set the text size and bold for each button. A preview shows your changes. Logo upload is not available yet, so emails carry no logo.
To control which address your emails are sent from, click Add email under the Subject field in any email editor, or see How to Customise Your Sender Email.
To get yourself or your team notified about subscription events, see Staff Notifications.