WooCommerce Email Placeholders Reference

Each default email listens for specific order status transitions, not just "order is now X". For example, the customer "Processing order" email fires on the transitions on-hold→processing, pending→processing, failed→processing and cancelled→processing, using hooks named like woocommerce_order_status_{from}_to_{to}_notification. That's why an order created directly as "processing" by a gateway (with no "from" status) can behave differently from one that moves there manually.

Placeholders like {site_title}, {site_address}, {site_url} and {store_email} work in every email's subject, heading and footer text field. A few emails add their own, most commonly {order_number}, in their own default subject line, listed in the table below.

• Check WooCommerce → Settings → Emails → the specific email is toggled "Enable this email notification".
• Check the exact status transition. Some emails only fire on specific "from → to" transitions, not on every order that reaches that status (see the table below).
• Check your recipient. Admin emails go to the address in that email's Recipient(s) field (defaults to the site's admin email); customer emails go to the order's billing email.
• Check whether the change happened programmatically. A plugin or import that changes post_status/order status directly in the database (instead of calling $order->set_status() / $order->update_status()) skips WooCommerce's transition hooks entirely, so no email fires.
• Check your host's outgoing mail. WordPress's default mail() function is blocked or filtered by many hosts; an SMTP plugin (WP Mail SMTP, FluentSMTP) with a real provider is the most common fix for emails that WooCommerce tried to send but never arrived.
• Check spam and any "gray listing" delay on the receiving side, especially for the customer's own address.