Trigger custom email only on the first order generated from a subscription product

So I’ve checked, and from my tests, it looks like if you set the custom email’s “Trigger(s)” option to a new order trigger, e.g., “New order (Any status)”, then the email is sent only once, on the initial order. I was testing with the official WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin.

If you are using some other plugin for subscriptions, it may behave differently, and in this case – I’ve just released a new plugin version (v1.5.2), where I’ve added the alg_wc_custom_emails_is_enabled filter, so now we can prevent email from being sent with a PHP snippet. For example, we could check if it’s a WooCommerce Subscriptions renewal order with:

add_filter( 'alg_wc_custom_emails_is_enabled', function ( $is_enabled, $email, $object_id ) {
    if (
        'alg_wc_custom' === $email->id && // it's custom email #1
        ( $order = wc_get_order( $object_id ) ) && is_a( $order, 'WC_Order' ) && // it's an order
        ( $subscription_id = get_post_meta( $object_id, '_subscription_renewal', true ) ) // it's a renewal
    ) {
        // Do NOT send email
        return false;
    }
    return $is_enabled;
}, 10, 3 );

I hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Hi,

Happy to help 🙂 Please let me know if you’ll bump into any issues while testing.

Hi Liviu,

Sorry for the late reply.

Could you please provide more details about the specific scenario you are referring to? In order to address your concern effectively, we need to know whether you are using any subscription plugin or if this is a general situation that you are encountering.

Once we have a clearer understanding of your setup and requirements, we will be able to offer you tailored suggestions.

Kind regards,
Moshtafizur

Hi there,

Sorry for the late reply.

I have escalated this with our development team. They will get back to you as soon as they can.

Kind regards,
Moshtafizur

Update: I’ve just realized we may have a problem with this snippet. Let’s say the customer makes two orders on the same day. Even though the first email will be scheduled, and the second will not (so all ok for now), when three days pass, and the scheduled email is triggered – it won’t be sent because, at this point, the customer already has more than one order. To fix this, please update the plugin to the latest v2.2.8, and change our snippet to:

add_filter( 'alg_wc_custom_emails_is_enabled', function ( $is_enabled, $email, $object_id, $do_force_send ) {
    if (
        ! $do_force_send && // not "force send", e.g., scheduled
        'alg_wc_custom' === $email->id && // it's custom email #1
        ( $order = wc_get_order( $object_id ) ) && // it's an order email
        ( $customer_id = $order->get_customer_id() ) && // not guest order
        ( $customer = new WC_Customer( $customer_id ) ) && // get customer object
        $customer->get_order_count() > 1 // not first order
    ) {
        // Do NOT send email
        return false;
    }
    return $is_enabled;
}, 10, 4 );

Please give it a try and let me know what you think.

Hi, Liviu,

Please update the plugin to the latest v2.9.1 and add this snippet to your site:

add_action( 'alg_wc_custom_emails_email_sent', function ( $email ) {

    global $wpdb;

    $option_name = "woocommerce_{$email->id}_settings";

    // Start MySQL transaction
    $wpdb->query( 'START TRANSACTION' );

    // Get current settings
    $row = $wpdb->get_row( $wpdb->prepare( "SELECT option_value FROM {$wpdb->options} WHERE option_name = %s LIMIT 1", $option_name ) );

    // Exclude recipients
    $settings = ( isset( $row->option_value ) && '' !== $row->option_value ? unserialize( $row->option_value ) : array() );
    $settings['exclude_recipients'] = $email->get_recipient() . ',' . ( $settings['exclude_recipients'] ?? '' );
    $settings = serialize( $settings );

    // Update (or Insert)
    if ( 0 === ( $result = $wpdb->update( $wpdb->options, array( 'option_value' => $settings, 'autoload' => 'yes' ), array( 'option_name' => $option_name ) ) ) ) {
        $result = $wpdb->insert( $wpdb->options, array( 'option_value' => $settings, 'autoload' => 'yes', 'option_name' => $option_name ) );
    }

    // Commit (or Rollback) MySQL transaction
    $wpdb->query( ( $result ? 'COMMIT' : 'ROLLBACK' ) );

} );

This snippet will automatically append the current recipient to the “Exclude recipients” option (in “WooCommerce > Settings > Emails > Custom email #X > Advanced Options”). This way, you can manually edit it if needed. However, the option may become too long if you send a lot of emails.

P.S. Generally, the snippet does this:

add_action( 'alg_wc_custom_emails_email_sent', function ( $email ) {
    $email->update_option(
        'exclude_recipients',
        $email->get_recipient() . ',' . $email->get_option( 'exclude_recipients', '' )
    );
} );

However, I think this shorter version has a problem – it may skip adding a recipient if two different custom emails are sent at (almost) the same time. To solve this, in the first snippet we are using MySQL transactions and executing DB queries directly.

Please give it a try and let me know what you think.