When investigating why a customer did not receive an email, follow these three steps in order: determine if the email was actually triggered, verify which address it was sent to, and confirm if it was successfully delivered.
Most inquiries are resolved at the first step. Storefront only triggers specific emails under defined conditions; therefore, in many cases, a customer who received nothing did so because no email was due to be sent.
Before you start
Check the event log for the customer or domain. Emails Storefront sent are recorded there, so the log settles the first question quickly. One exception is worth knowing: a "forgot login" request for an address that matches no account sends nothing and logs nothing, because there is no account to attach the entry to.
Step 1: Check whether the email was due
Domain renewal and expiry notices
The schedule depends entirely on the domain's auto-renew setting. All of these come from Storefront rather than OpenSRS, so they carry your branding.
With auto-renew on:
| When | What happens |
|---|---|
| 37 days before expiry | Renewal reminder sent |
| 31 days before expiry | Renewal reminder sent |
| 30, 29, 28, 7 and 1 days before | Auto-renew attempts. An email is sent only if the attempt fails |
| 1 day after expiry | Domain expired email sent |
With auto-renew off:
| When | What happens |
|---|---|
| 30 days before expiry | First expiry notice |
| 7 days before expiry | Second expiry notice |
| 1 day before expiry | Third expiry notice |
| 1 day after expiry | Domain expired email sent |
ICANN requires the notices in the auto-renew off schedule.
The common misreading is the auto-renew on schedule. Those five renewal attempts only generate an email when they fail, so a customer whose auto-renew worked correctly receives exactly two reminders, at 37 and 31 days. Nothing is broken.
Subscription renewal reminders
Check three things. The billing option's reminder dates under Settings → Product Catalog, because no reminder goes out on a date you have not selected. The subscription's status on the reminder date, because Storefront sends no renewal reminders for Suspended or Expired subscriptions. Then the address and spam, as below.
Import notifications
Import emails are only sent for domains that imported successfully. A customer whose import failed never receives one.
Step 2: Check the address
For most emails this is the address on the customer's account, which is worth confirming rather than assuming.
Import emails are the exception. They go to the WHOIS Owner contact email recorded at import time, not to the Storefront account address. If that address was wrong, the email reached whoever owns it.
Step 3: Check deliverability
Your support email address is the sender for every customer email Storefront sends, including order confirmations, renewal reminders and expiry notices.
By default that address shows as Unverified, and mail from an unverified sender domain is far more likely to be filtered into spam. To fix it, open General settings, click Authenticate domain next to your support email address, and follow the steps. This requires adding DNS records to your domain at your registrar.
Ask the customer to check spam and junk folders before concluding that nothing arrived.
Things that look wrong but are not
The customer got an email saying their subscription is ending, but they want it to renew. They received the expiry version, which means auto-renew is off. They can resume from Your Subscriptions in their account before the period ends, or you can open the subscription in Storefront Manager and click Enable Renewal.
A customer reports a payment failed email, but Storefront Manager looks fine. A subscription shows Payment Failed until a retry succeeds. If a retry has since succeeded, the status returns to Active and the customer needs to do nothing. Ask them to check their billing details only if the status persists.
You changed a product's reminder dates. Changes apply to reminders that have not been sent yet. Reminders already sent are not resent.
You want to reword an email. The wording and subject lines are fixed. Storefront sends the same text for every reseller, with your store name and the customer's details filled in.
When to contact OpenSRS Support
Contact OpenSRS Support when the event log shows an email was sent, the address on the account is correct, your sender domain is verified, and the customer still has nothing after checking spam. Include the customer's email address and the date the email should have arrived.
Related articles
- Emails sent to your customers
- Domain statuses and renewal reminders
- Initial setup
- Using the event log
- Managing customer subscriptions
Full Storefront documentation
These troubleshooting articles cover what to do when something breaks. Setup guides, feature documentation and the Storefront API reference all live on the Storefront documentation portal.