WooCommerce Custom Email Templates

Design modern, branded WooCommerce transactional emails with a drag-and-drop builder — without ever editing WooCommerce's own files.

Description

WooCommerce Custom Email Templates lets you replace the look of any WooCommerce email — New Order, Processing, Completed, Customer Invoice and more — with your own drag-and-drop design, while WooCommerce keeps sending the mail exactly as it always has.

• Automatic discovery of every WooCommerce email type, including ones added by other plugins
• A block-based builder with 15 blocks: header, columns, heading, text, image, button, divider, spacer, custom HTML, order details, order totals, customer details, download links, store information, footer
• Undo and redo, with Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z
• Reusable components — build a section once, insert it into any template, re-sync them all when it changes
• Version history for every template, with one-click restore
• A starter library with live previews: Minimal, Modern Store, Premium, Dark, Compact and Blank
• Global colors, typography and spacing, applied across the whole template
• Dynamic {tag} placeholders for customer and order data
• Preheader (inbox preview text) support
• Desktop, tablet and mobile preview, with sample data or a real order
• Send-test-email, with a send throttle
• Duplicate, delete, reset to WooCommerce default
• JSON import/export
• A guided first-run setup
• Never modifies a WooCommerce file — overrides are applied through WooCommerce's own hooks and are instantly reversible

Requirements

WooCommerce must be installed and active.

Installation

1. Upload the plugin to /wp-content/plugins/woo-custom-email-templates.
2. Activate it through the Plugins screen.
3. Open Email Templates in the admin sidebar (just below the WooCommerce menus) to get started.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does this change any WooCommerce files?

No. Templates are injected at send time through WooCommerce's own woocommerce_mail_content and woocommerce_email_subject_{id} filters. Turning an override off restores WooCommerce's own template immediately, and your WooCommerce email settings are never written to.

What happens to my templates if I deactivate the plugin?

Nothing is deleted. Emails simply revert to WooCommerce's own templates. Data is only removed on uninstall, and only if you tick Delete plugin data on uninstall in Settings.

For developers

Root namespace: WCEM\, autoloaded PSR-4 from includes/. No Composer dependency.

How an override is applied

WooCommerce sends an email
        ↓
woocommerce_email_header  →  Bridge captures which WC_Email it is
        ↓
woocommerce_mail_content  →  Bridge looks up the assigned template
        ↓
        is it assigned, enabled, and published?  ── no ──▶  WooCommerce's own HTML
        ↓ yes
TemplateRenderer renders blocks + styles, resolves {tags}
        ↓
        our HTML replaces the body

Actions and filters

Backwards compatibility

Pre-1.1 class names (WCEM_Plugin, WCEM_Template_Post_Type, WCEM_Blocks, …) and the wcem_block() / wcem_install_starter_templates() helpers still resolve through a deprecated compatibility layer in includes/compat.php. They are lazily aliased, so nothing extra loads unless a legacy name is actually used.

Tests

Four plain-PHP suites, no PHPUnit or Composer required. See tests/README.md.

php tests/smoke-test.php          # pure logic, no WordPress needed
php tests/integration-core.php    # live bootstrap, CRUD, blocks, override bridge
php tests/integration-screens.php # all admin screens render without notices
php tests/integration-ajax.php    # every AJAX endpoint, nonces and caps included

Changelog

1.1.0

• Fixed: WooCommerce order blocks could send fabricated order data to real customers. Order Details, Order Totals and Customer Details fell back to demo content (Classic T-Shirt × 2, 123 Sample St) whenever no order was present — including in a live send. A template containing one of those blocks assigned to New Account or Reset Password, which carry a user and never an order, mailed that placeholder basket and address to the customer. Demo content is now gated to editor previews; in a live send those blocks render nothing.
• Fixed: the template editor, component editor and onboarding wizard were unreachable. remove_submenu_page() during admin_menu made WordPress resolve the wrong page hook, so all three died with "Sorry, you are not allowed to access this page." They are now hidden on admin_head, after the access check.
• Previews now fill customer and order tags with demo values instead of leaving blanks, so the editor no longer shows "Hi ,". Live sends are unaffected.
• Declared High-Performance Order Storage (HPOS) compatibility. WooCommerce previously listed the plugin as "uncertain" and warned administrators before enabling HPOS.
• Verified against WordPress 7.0 and WooCommerce 11; tested-up-to headers raised accordingly.
• Refactored the whole plugin onto the WCEM\ namespace with a PSR-4 autoloader; every pre-1.1 class name still works through a deprecated alias layer.
• Moved the plugin to its own top-level admin menu instead of nesting inside WooCommerce's submenu.
• Added reusable components, with re-sync into the templates that use them.
• Added template version history and restore, built on WordPress post revisions.
• Added a template library screen with live previews and category filtering.
• Added a first-run setup wizard.
• Added undo/redo to the builder, with keyboard shortcuts and a bounded 50-step history.
• Added a Download Links block for downloadable products. It renders nothing when the order has no downloads, so it is safe to leave in every template.
• Added a Store Information block that pulls the store's postal address from WooCommerce's own settings, with optional phone and email — transactional mail is widely expected to carry a real postal address.
• Added a Columns block (2 or 3 email-safe table columns).
• Added tablet preview, plus sorting and pagination on the templates list.
• Added integration test suites covering the admin screens and every AJAX endpoint.
• Fixed: the preheader / preview text field was saved but never rendered into the email.
• Fixed: the global Link Color setting had no effect on links in text and footer blocks.
• Security: capped the size of uploaded import files, and quoted the display name in the test-email From header.
• Accessibility: keyboard block reordering (Alt+↑/↓), labels on every control, Esc closes dialogs.

1.0.0

• Initial release.