Customers may receive their confirmation while staff receive nothing because WooCommerce’s New order email uses a separate recipient list and template. The store may still be taking payments, which makes this an operational emergency rather than proof checkout is down.
Use the WooCommerce order list as the source for fulfilment while notification delivery is repaired. Do not wait for missing email to decide whether orders exist.
Establish the affected window
Find the last notification received and first missing order. Record order IDs, statuses, payment methods and notification recipients.
Check whether only one administrator mailbox is affected or all recipients. Compare customer email delivery for the same orders.
Avoid forwarding complete customer order messages to personal accounts during testing; they contain personal and commercial data.
Inspect the New order configuration
In WooCommerce > Settings > Emails, open New order. Confirm it is enabled and that recipient addresses are current and correctly separated.
This email normally fires when a new order reaches relevant initial statuses. Read private order notes to ensure order creation and payment events occurred.
Configuration evidence:
email enabled
recipient list
sender domain
template override status
last known successful order IDDo not add arbitrary administrators as recipients; only staff with a business need should receive customer data.
Compare with other WooCommerce messages
Trigger or resend one controlled administrator notification and one customer message after reconciling the order. If customer delivery works, focus on recipient list, mailbox and New order hooks.
If neither sends, trace the shared WordPress/SMTP path. If other administrator messages arrive but New order does not, inspect the specific email class and template.
Changing order statuses repeatedly is not a safe email test because it can alter stock and fulfilment.
Trace generation and SMTP
Use protected mail logs to identify whether WordPress generated the message and which recipient the SMTP service received. Record message ID and provider response.
Handoff:
order event -> WooCommerce email
WooCommerce -> wp_mail
WordPress -> SMTP provider
provider -> recipient mailboxLog metadata rather than the full email body. Never expose SMTP credentials.
Check aliases and forwarding
Operational addresses often forward to several people. Verify the mailbox or alias exists, forwarding targets are valid and the receiving provider is not rejecting forwarded authentication.
Test direct delivery to an authorised domain mailbox before blaming WooCommerce. Forwarding loops, full mailboxes and recently removed employees can affect only administrator notifications.
Use a role address owned by the business, with individual access and retention policy.
Inspect mailbox filtering
Search spam, quarantine, inbox rules and security gateway events. Repeated subjects such as “New order” can be routed automatically.
Allowlisting an authenticated sender may help, but do not bypass malware filtering for all attachments or domains. WooCommerce order emails normally do not need executable attachments.
Compare the provider’s delivery event with the final mailbox log where available.
Review custom recipient hooks
Themes, snippets and multi-vendor plugins can change recipients or disable email for particular products and statuses.
add_filter( 'woocommerce_email_recipient_new_order', function ( $recipient, $order ) {
// Return only validated, authorised operational recipients.
return $recipient;
}, 10, 2 );Search site-owned code for this filter and handle cases where an order is unavailable. Avoid generating recipient addresses from untrusted checkout input.
Restore and monitor operations
Correct the configuration, hook, SMTP, forwarding or filtering issue shown by evidence. Resend only necessary notifications and tell fulfilment staff which orders were covered manually.
Place a controlled order and confirm one staff notification, customer email, payment and stock result. Recurring care should monitor the provider for New order rejections and maintain a dashboard/order-queue process so fulfilment never depends exclusively on email.