1. Can your site send emails?
There could be several reasons why email notifications are not working. First, it's important to check if your site can send emails at all. Bookly doesn’t send emails independently; it relies on the native WordPress function wp_mail() to send all email notifications. This function handles email messages for the entire site, not just Bookly.
To check if your site can send emails, you can install any mail checking plugin and send a test email to yourself. For example, you can use this plugin: Check Email.
If you don’t receive the test email, please contact your hosting provider to fix this issue. Alternatively, you can try to solve the issue yourself by installing an SMTP plugin and configuring it to use an SMTP mail server. SMTP is a push protocol used to send mail. Here's an example of how to configure SMTP to use Gmail: How to Send Email in WordPress Using the Gmail SMTP Server.
You can configure SMTP settings directly in Bookly. This allows you to specify the SMTP server details within the plugin itself, ensuring reliable email delivery.
Also, remember to check your spam folder if the test email doesn't appear in your inbox.
2. Does Bookly send email notifications?
In some situations, your site may be able to send simple emails but encounter issues sending larger emails with HTML content, such as Bookly email notifications.
To diagnose this issue, you can install a mail logging plugin, make a test appointment, and check the mail log. If you see that the emails are sent but not delivered, then the problem may still be with your site, and you should contact your hosting provider to resolve this issue. You can try using this mail logging plugin: WP Mail Logging.
If there are no sent messages in the mail log, proceed to the next step.
Additionally, remember to check your spam folder if the emails aren't received in your inbox.
3. Check email notifications settings in Bookly.
- Verify the default appointment status of newly booked appointments in Settings > Appointments.
- If using the Bookly Cart (Add-on) and intending to send one notification for all appointments from the cart, enable combined notifications with relevant status in the Email Notifications section. Combined notifications are sent when customers book an appointment on the front end. Single notifications are sent when manually adding an appointment in the back-end. Access the Email Notifications section and ensure that both single and combined email notifications are enabled. For example, if the default status is ‘Approved’ and combined notifications are disabled, enable ‘Notification to customer about approved appointment’.
- Check the Sender email address to ensure it complies with your hosting provider's restrictions. Some providers only allow sending notifications from the domain associated with the sender's email address. For example, if your domain name is www.example.com and you set admin@gmail.com as the Sender email address, your email notifications might not be sent because your hosting provider allows sending them only from addresses associated with the example.com domain.
- When creating, editing, or deleting an appointment via the Bookly admin panel, remember to tick the box for Send notifications.
4. Check the status of the payments.
Bookly sends emails and SMS notifications, and switches the payment status to completed after receiving payment confirmation from the payment gateway.
If you encounter any issues with payment statuses remaining pending, please don't hesitate to reach out to us for assistance. Our support team will promptly investigate the matter and provide necessary guidance to resolve the issue.