How Do I Send Automatic Review Request Emails in WooCommerce?
WooCommerce does not send review request emails automatically. There is no native setting for it. The most reliable way to set one up is Krom Automation, a free WordPress plugin that triggers an email a set number of days after an order completes.
The free version handles the full workflow, including the delay, the email, and duplicate prevention. Pro is only needed if you want a visual email builder or more advanced branching.
Most guides stop at “send the email.” This one covers the timing decisions that actually determine whether customers click, how to follow up without annoying people, and how a reward coupon can double your response rate. It also covers what not to do, because a poorly timed review request does more damage than none at all.
If you are managing multiple WooCommerce stores or client sites, Krom Automation runs entirely on your own server. Execution logs, email content, and customer data stay in your own database, not a third-party SaaS platform.
Browse the full feature list to see everything the free version includes before you install.
Does WooCommerce Have a Built-In Review Request Email?
No. WooCommerce sends transactional emails for orders, shipping updates, and password resets.
It does not include a post-purchase review request, either in the free plugin or in any official WooCommerce extension. This is a gap every store owner hits eventually, usually when they notice their product pages have zero reviews six months after launch.
The gap matters commercially. Products with at least 5 reviews convert at a meaningfully higher rate than products with none, because first-time buyers rely on social proof when they cannot touch or try a product. Filling that gap requires a plugin that can watch for order completion, wait a defined number of days, then send a targeted email.
What you need to build this is simple:
- A trigger that fires when an order status changes to “completed”
- A delay node that waits the right number of days before sending
- A Send Email action with merge tags pulling in the customer name and order details
- A “run once per entity” guard so the same customer does not get the same email twice
Krom Automation provides all four in the free plugin. The how Krom Automation works overview explains the trigger-action model if you want the full picture before building.
How to Set Up an Automatic Review Request Email in Krom Automation
Install the free plugin from the WordPress.org plugin directory, activate it, and open Krom Automation from your WordPress admin sidebar. Create a new workflow and give it a name you will recognise in six months, for example “Review Request: 7 Days After Completion”.
Step 1: Set the trigger. Select “Order Completed” as the trigger. This fires every time a WooCommerce order moves into the completed status, whether that transition happens manually, via a payment gateway callback, or through a fulfilment integration.
Step 2: Add a delay. Drop a Delay node onto the canvas after the trigger. Set the delay to the number of days appropriate for your product type.
The timing section below gives specific recommendations. The delays and scheduling documentation covers all available delay units, including hours, days, weeks, and a custom seconds value.
Step 3: Add the Send Email action. Connect a Send Email node after the delay. Set the “To” field using the merge tag for the customer email.
Add the customer’s first name to the greeting using the appropriate merge tag. The merge tags documentation lists every variable available from the Order Completed trigger, including order number, product names, and billing details.
Step 4: Enable Run Once. In workflow settings, enable “run once per entity.” This prevents a customer who places five orders from receiving five separate review request sequences. The workflow settings documentation explains how entity enforcement works and what counts as a unique entity.
Step 5: Test before activating. Use the built-in workflow simulator to run a dry test with zero side effects. This lets you confirm the merge tags resolve correctly and the delay is configured as intended before a real customer triggers the workflow.
A review request that arrives before the product has been delivered is not a request. It is an irritant. Timing is not a detail you can set once and forget.
How Long Should You Wait Before Sending?
Timing is the variable most guides ignore, and it is the one that most affects whether the email gets a response. Sending too early means the customer has not used the product. Sending too late means the purchase is forgotten and the motivation to write anything has passed.
The right delay depends almost entirely on what was ordered and how it is delivered.
| Product Type | Recommended Delay | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Digital download (software, template, PDF) | 2 to 3 days | Delivered instantly. Customer has had time to use it within 48 hours. |
| Physical goods, standard shipping | 7 to 10 days after order completion | Allows 5 to 7 days for delivery plus 2 to 3 days to use the product. |
| Physical goods, slow or international shipping | 14 days | Reduces risk of emailing before the parcel arrives. |
| Consumable (food, supplements, skincare) | 14 to 21 days | Customer needs time to notice an effect or form an opinion. |
| Online course or subscription | 21 to 30 days | Meaningful feedback requires actual usage time. |
If your WooCommerce store sells across multiple categories, build a separate workflow for each product type rather than applying one delay to everything. Krom Automation lets you add a conditional branch after the trigger to route orders down different delay paths based on product category or any other order attribute.
For WooCommerce Subscriptions, where orders recur on a schedule, the timing logic is different again. The WooCommerce Subscriptions integration documentation covers the subscription-specific triggers available in Krom Automation Pro and how to avoid sending duplicate requests on every renewal.
Should You Include a Review Reward Coupon?
Yes, if your margins allow it. A reward coupon is the single highest-leverage addition to a review request workflow. The mechanics are straightforward: the review request email mentions that leaving a review earns a discount code, and a second workflow fires after the review is submitted to deliver the coupon.
How to build the coupon delivery step in Krom Automation:
- Build the review request workflow as described above. The first email mentions the reward but does not include the coupon code yet.
- Create a second workflow triggered by “Comment Approved” (WooCommerce product reviews post as comments).
- Add a conditional branch to check that the comment is on a product post type, not a blog post.
- Connect a “Create Coupon” action. Set an expiry of 14 to 30 days to create urgency.
- Connect a Send Email action that delivers the coupon code to the commenter using the merge tag for their email.
This two-workflow structure means the coupon is only delivered after the review is actually approved, not just promised. It also means you are not generating unused coupon codes for customers who never follow through.
The conditions and branching documentation covers how to set up the post type check that prevents the coupon trigger from firing on non-product comments.
The coupon is not a bribe for a positive review. It is a thank-you for any review. That distinction matters legally in some markets, and it matters to customers who would otherwise feel their honest opinion is being purchased.
What About a Follow-Up Email if the First One Gets No Response?
This is the gap that competitors in this space do not address. Sending one email and stopping is leaving roughly half your potential reviews on the table. Most customers who would write a review simply did not notice the first email, or opened it at the wrong moment and forgot.
A two-step sequence is easy to build in Krom Automation using the workflow canvas:
- Email 1: Friendly review request, sent at your calculated delay after order completion.
- Wait node: Add a second delay of 5 to 7 days after the first email.
- Email 2: A shorter follow-up. Reference the first email. Make the coupon reward more prominent if you are offering one.
- Stop condition: Use a conditional branch before Email 2 to check whether a review already exists from this customer. If yes, skip the follow-up. If no, send it.
Keep the total sequence to two emails. A third follow-up for a product review is aggressive, and it generates unsubscribes rather than reviews. Two contacts is enough to capture the people who missed the first one without irritating the people who simply do not want to leave a review.
For broader WooCommerce notification automation, including order alerts for your team, our guide on WooCommerce order notifications in Slack shows how to extend the same workflow approach to internal communications.
What Does It Cost to Do This?
The basic review request workflow described in this article, one email after a delay, uses only free Krom Automation features. The free version is free forever with no run caps, no trial period, and no feature paywall. There is no limit on the number of workflows or executions.
| What you want to do | Free or Pro? | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Single review request email after order completion | Free | $0 |
| Delayed follow-up if no review is submitted | Free | $0 |
| Coupon reward delivered after review approval | Free | $0 |
| Visual email builder for branded HTML emails | Pro | From $69/year or $199 lifetime |
| Subscription-specific triggers (renewal vs. first purchase) | Pro | From $69/year or $199 lifetime |
| Schedule trigger for weekly review digest to admin | Pro | From $69/year or $199 lifetime |
Krom Automation Pro starts at $69 a year for a single site, or $199 as a one-time lifetime payment. Every Pro plan includes every Pro feature and all 25 integrations.
The only difference between the Basic, Standard, and Enterprise plans is the number of site activations. See full pricing details including the current launch pricing on all plans.
For context on how this compares to alternatives: Uncanny Automator’s automation plans start from $199 a year for one site, as of September 2026. AutomateWoo is a WooCommerce extension sold separately.
Zapier’s Professional plan runs around $240 a year for 750 tasks a month, billed annually, with task-based billing that adds cost every time a workflow fires. Krom Automation has no per-execution fee at any tier.
One Honest Limitation to Know About
Krom Automation runs delayed actions through WordPress Cron via Action Scheduler. On sites with consistent traffic, this is reliable and the delay fires within a few minutes of its scheduled time. On very low-traffic sites, where no visitor arrives for several hours at a stretch, WP-Cron fires late because it needs an HTTP request to trigger it.
If your store is low traffic, configure a real server cron job to call wp-cron.php every five minutes. This is a one-line addition to your server’s crontab and is documented by most managed WordPress hosts. Most stores with active WooCommerce traffic will never notice the issue, but it is worth knowing before you set a 2-day delay and wonder why the email arrived on day 3.
If you want to push the review request via SMS as well as email, the WooCommerce SMS notifications guide covers how to add Twilio to a Krom Automation workflow alongside the email step. SMS alongside email can lift response rates significantly for high-value orders where the customer has opted into text messages.
Also from wpRigel
Pollify is wpRigel’s Gutenberg-native poll, survey, and quiz plugin. Polls are built as real blocks inside the WordPress editor, so there are no shortcodes to paste and no separate dashboard to learn. If you collect post-purchase feedback directly on your site rather than by email, Pollify is built for that.
Commandify gives the WordPress admin a keyboard-first command palette. Press Cmd or Ctrl plus K to jump to any order, search any product, update a customer address, or run maintenance tasks without clicking through menus. It is the only WordPress command palette with full WooCommerce order, product, and customer commands built in.
FAQ
Will enabling the workflow send review requests to old completed orders?
No. Krom Automation triggers fire on new events from the moment the workflow is activated.
It does not backfill past orders unless you build a separate one-time import workflow to do so deliberately. Existing completed orders are not affected when you first switch the workflow on.
Can I send one review request email for an order with multiple products?
Yes. The Order Completed trigger fires once per order, not once per product.
Your email can reference the full order using merge tags, or you can include a review link for each product in the order using available order item merge tags. You do not need to send one email per product unless you specifically want to.
What happens if a customer completes a second order? Do they get another request?
By default, if you enable “run once per entity” with the entity set to the customer, the workflow fires only once per customer regardless of how many orders they place. If you want a review request on every order, leave that setting off. The right choice depends on your average order frequency and how much contact you want with repeat buyers.
Can I personalise the email with the specific product name the customer bought?
Yes. The Order Completed trigger exposes order item data through merge tags.
You can reference the first product name, the full list of products, the order total, and the customer’s billing name in any text field in the Send Email action. The merge tags reference lists every available variable.
Do I need a Pro plan to send a coupon as part of the review reward workflow?
No. The Create Coupon action and the Comment Approved trigger are both available in the free version.
You can build the full reward workflow described in this article, including coupon generation and delivery, without upgrading. Pro adds a visual email builder for designing the reward email with branded HTML, but the coupon generation itself is free.
Is review-gating allowed under WooCommerce or Google’s policies?
Review-gating means only inviting satisfied customers to leave reviews while suppressing negative ones. This is against Google’s review policies and is considered deceptive. The workflow in this article sends the same request to all customers who complete an order, which is compliant.
The reward coupon is offered for any submitted review, not only positive ones. Do not add a conditional branch that routes customers to different paths based on their order satisfaction before they have written anything.
Download the free plugin or see Pro plan pricing to get started. The free version covers the full workflow described in this article with no caps, no trial, and no credit card required. Get it from the WordPress.org plugin directory and have your first review request workflow live in under 15 minutes.