Emails

The Emails page owns what your buyers read. Settings owns who sends it and whether it is sent at all.

The three templates

• Delivery email. Sent once per paid order, listing every file in it. This is the message the download link arrives in.
• Order confirmation button. Not an email of ours: a button you design here and paste into Shopify’s own order confirmation template. See what buyers see.
• Update notice. Sent to previous buyers when you publish a new version of a file and choose to tell them.

There is also a resend, sent when you use Resend on the Orders page, which can carry an optional note to that one buyer. It uses the delivery template.

Editing a template

The subject and the body are both templates, and placeholders are written as {{variable}}. The editor lists the ones the app understands, which cover the store name, the buyer’s name and address, the order reference, the file names, the file list as links, the download page link, the expiry date, your logo, and the note you type when you resend.

A placeholder the app does not recognise raises an Unknown variables warning before you save, and at send time an unknown placeholder collapses to nothing rather than putting braces in a customer’s inbox. A typo costs you a missing word, not a visible one.

The preview underneath is rendered by the same code that renders a real send, so what you see is what your buyer gets. Send a test to mails yourself a copy, and you can reset a template back to the shipped default.

Writing your own emails is part of the paid plans. On the free plan the editor and the preview are readable but locked, and the shipped default still sends.

Your logo and your sender

Both live under Settings, then Sending & domain.

Email logo is an image you upload, shown at the top of every email your buyers receive and in the order confirmation button snippet. Around 400 pixels wide on a transparent or white background works well; it is displayed at up to 180 pixels. If you use the order confirmation snippet, copy it again after changing the logo, because a pasted snippet keeps whatever it was copied with.

Sender name is used straight away, whatever else you have set up. Sender address is only used once the domain it belongs to has been verified.

Sending from your own domain

By default, mail goes out from the app’s own sender. To send from your own address instead, add your domain on the same page and add the DNS records it gives you. A subdomain such as mail.yourstore.com is the usual choice, because it keeps your download emails apart from the rest of your mail. The app tries to work out where your DNS is hosted and tailors the instructions to that panel.

Until the domain verifies, the app keeps using its own sender. That gate is deliberate: sending from an unverified domain damages the reputation of the whole sending account, and one store’s half-finished setup should not cost every other store its delivery rate. Once it verifies, the app switches over on its own.

Sending from your own domain is part of the top plan. See plans and storage.

If an email does not arrive

Every send is logged against the order with the address it went to and whether the sending provider accepted it, so the log is the first thing to check. Beyond that:

• Check the address on the order. It is the address the buyer typed at checkout.
• If you are sending from your own domain, confirm it is still verified. DNS changes and expiring records are the common cause of a working setup going quiet.
• Use Resend. A one-off rejection from a receiving server is common and usually clears.
• If the buyer cannot receive your mail at all, point them at the Downloads page in their customer account, which needs no email.