[Plugin: Easy Digital Downloads] Customers not receiving email with download links

Oh, and I’m also running Headway Themes, if that might make a difference. But everything looks fine from the front end, as mentioned. And using EDD version 1.1.3.2. Thanks!

Seemap, do other email notifications work in WP, such as new comments and new user registrations?

It sounds like your wp_mail() isn’t functioning properly (this is pretty common). The easiest work around for it is to install the Configure SMTP plugin and set WordPress to send email via an SMTP server.

I assume you set the from name, the subject, and the contents of the email? Have you given your downloadable product a source file?

Pippin, thank you so much for your quick and helpful reply. It was indeed a problem with wp_mail(). I hadn’t come across this issue before as the site is not live yet and there are no blog comments. Everything works perfectly now after routing mail via SMTP. Thanks again, and also for your great plugin.

Great to hear!

Hi,

I’m having the same issue, whereby customers are not receiving the purchase email with the download link in, nor am i getting an email to say a purchase has been made.

I’ve downloaded the configure SMTP Plugin like you say, but i have no idea how to set it up, can you please advise how to do this?

Thanks

Do you have a Gmail account by chance?

I do, but i’d rather not use it to send emails that are supposed to be from my website.

I used the SMTP server provided by my hosting company, it’s pretty straightforward: just get the details from your cpanel (or whatever admin system they provide) – they will normally provide your SMTP server and port information under the email settings. That way the email will be sent from your website, and not have the “via [email protected]” or whatever the header is Gmail attaches.

Thanks Seemap, Yeah i found those details in my cpanel, but when i entered them i still got the message “could not connect to SMTP host” when i tried a test email.

I also received this same message when i put my gmail details to test to see if it would at least work with those. Not really sure what else to try!

When using Gmail, the emails will still be sent from your site and the recipients won’t know the difference.

For it to work with Gmail, I believe you have to enable it in your Gmail settings. Go to Settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP, then make sure that POP and IMAP are both enabled.

Hi Pippin,

Both those options are enabled in my gmail already, yet i still get the error message saying “could not connect to SMTP host” which is strange. Just a thought, but would it be better to have the purchase email sent as ‘plain text only’ to avoid possible ISP spam filters?

Also, a seperate question, when people purchase downloads, they appear in the payment history many times. This is just one person’s purchase, for which i received one payment (although they didn’t receive the email with the download link), but they are listed 5 times in the payment history report:

3360 [email protected]
Edit | Delete
View Order Details
Purchased File

* xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx – ￡2.50

Discount used: earlybird

Total: ￡2.50
Buyer’s Personal Details:

* Name: xxxxx xxxxx
* Email: [email protected]

Payment Method:
PayPal
Purchase Key
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Close
￡2.50 July 26, 2012 Pending

3359 [email protected]
Edit | Resend Purchase Receipt | Delete
View Order Details
Purchased File

Discount used: earlybird

Total: ￡0
Buyer’s Personal Details:

* Name: xxxxx xxxxx
* Email: [email protected]

Payment Method:
PayPal
Purchase Key
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Close
￡0 July 26, 2012 Complete

3358 [email protected]
Edit | Delete
View Order Details
Purchased File

* xxxxxxxxxx – ￡2.50

Discount used: earlybird

Total: ￡2.50
Buyer’s Personal Details:

* Name: xxxxx xxxxx
* Email: [email protected]

Payment Method:
PayPal
Purchase Key
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Close
￡2.50 July 26, 2012 Pending

3357 [email protected]
Edit | Resend Purchase Receipt | Delete
View Order Details
Purchased File

Discount used: earlybird

Total: ￡0
Buyer’s Personal Details:

* Name: xxxxxx xxxxx
* Email: [email protected]

Payment Method:
PayPal
Purchase Key
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Close
￡0 July 26, 2012 Complete

3356 [email protected]
Edit | Resend Purchase Receipt | Delete
View Order Details
Purchased File

* xxxxxxxxxxxxx – ￡2.50

Discount used: earlybird

Total: ￡2.50
Buyer’s Personal Details:

* Name: xxxxxx xxxxx
* Email: [email protected]

Payment Method:
PayPal
Purchase Key
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Close
￡2.50 July 26, 2012 Pending

Only one payment was taken and it went through in paypal, so all is ok from the buyer’s perspective, but why are so many records created for their purchase?

That is really odd . . .

Using plain text emails is an idea, though it makes a few of the purchase receipt features impossible, primarily the option to have nice purchase receipt templates.

Do you always get multiple entries into the payment history, or just this one time? It looks like what they did was submit the order 5 times, but only paid once.

Two of them have come out like this, the others have just been one line in the payments history – maybe they are using their browser back button or something during their purchase?

No sales or earnings are reported in the reports section though despite downloads being made, only the third graph for earnings per month has anything registered.

Also, is it worth turning on the “Alternate Paypal purchase verification’ and ‘Disable paypal IPN verification’ as all payments have come through as pending so far and i’ve had to manually set them to ‘complete’ in order to send the download links to the customer?

https://quirm.net/2012/07/27/paypal-issues/

Sales and earnings reports are only altered once a payment is marked as complete.

It’s possible that the user is hitting the back button, though that’s strange that they’d hit it so many times. The pending payments are recorded as soon as the user is directed to Paypal, so they would have to go to PayPal and then click back to your site 5 times for this to happen. It’s possible, though odd.

Yes, please check the box for Disable PayPal IPN. Also as Esmi pointed out, PayPal has been having some problems lately. The option to Disable the IPN will quite likely resolve the issue though.