Core Email Notifications
4 min read
Core email notifications are the three built-in Free notifications TrustLens sends to your admin email by default. They’re not configurable in detail like Pro’s automation-based notifications — they’re simple, scheduled, and always-on for stores that want minimum-configuration visibility into what TrustLens is doing.
Location: TrustLens → Notifications.
The Three Core Notifications #
| Notification | When It Fires | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Blocked Checkout Alert | A blocked customer attempts checkout | On |
| Activation Summary | Once, shortly after plugin activation | On (one-time) |
| Weekly Protection Report | Mondays at 9 AM (store timezone) | On |
Blocked Checkout Alert #
Fires when a customer marked as blocked tries to complete checkout. Useful for:
- Knowing when blocked customers continue attempting — they may escalate to email support
- Verifying enforcement is working
- Catching false positives quickly
Email Contents #
- Customer email
- Customer trust score and segment
- Date and time of attempt
- Brief reason summary (top signals)
- Link to the customer’s detail page
Rate Limiting #
To prevent spam if a single customer attempts checkout dozens of times, the alert deduplicates per customer per hour. First attempt fires the email; subsequent attempts within the hour update a counter but don’t fire additional emails.
Activation Summary #
One-time email sent shortly after the plugin is activated. Confirms successful installation and walks through next steps. Contents:
- Welcome message
- Confirmation of database setup, HMAC key generation, module enablement
- “Run Historical Sync” call to action
- Quick links to: Dashboard, Customers, Settings
- Brief feature overview
The Activation Summary fires once. Reactivating the plugin doesn’t resend it. If you deleted plugin data and reinstalled, it’ll fire again on the fresh install.
Weekly Protection Report #
Sent every Monday at 9 AM (store timezone) summarizing the past 7 days of TrustLens activity. The default schedule is configurable.
Report Sections #
- Score Movement Summary — average store-wide score change, customers entering/exiting each segment
- Top Risk Customers — 5 highest-risk customers in the week
- Detection Activity — counts per module (refund signals fired, coupon abuse detected, linked accounts found, etc.)
- Chargeback Activity — disputes filed, current monthly ratio
- Card-Testing Defense — lockouts fired, Panic Freeze activations
- Recommended Actions — bulleted prompts based on the data (e.g. “5 new Critical-segment customers — review”)
Why Weekly #
Weekly is the right cadence for a stable signal — short enough to catch emerging issues, long enough that the report contains meaningful data. Daily would be noisy on most stores; monthly would be too slow.
If you need more frequent updates, Pro’s daily digest fires at any cadence you configure.
Configuring Core Notifications #
Settings: TrustLens → Notifications.
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Admin email | WordPress admin_email | Recipient for all core notifications. Accepts comma-separated list. |
| Sender name | “TrustLens” | The “From” name on emails |
| Sender email | WordPress default | The “From” email. Must be authorized on your domain for deliverability. |
| Blocked Checkout Alert | On | Master toggle |
| Weekly Protection Report | On | Master toggle |
| Weekly report day | Monday | Day of week to send |
| Weekly report time | 09:00 | Time of day (store timezone) |
Deliverability #
WordPress’s built-in wp_mail() is unreliable on many hosts — emails get dropped, marked as spam, or never delivered. For reliable delivery:
- Install an SMTP plugin (WP Mail SMTP, FluentSMTP, etc.) and configure with a real outbound provider (SendGrid, Postmark, AWS SES)
- Ensure your store’s sending domain has SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records set
- Use a sender email on your own domain, not a Gmail/Yahoo address
If you’re not receiving expected notifications, the issue is almost always deliverability rather than TrustLens.
Multiple Recipients #
The recipient field accepts a comma-separated list:
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
All recipients get the same email. For differentiated notifications (different recipients receiving different alerts), use Pro’s automation engine instead.
HTML vs Plain Text #
Core notifications send as HTML by default. The HTML is simple — table-based layout, no external CSS, inline styling — designed to render in most email clients including Outlook.
To force plain text: Settings → Notifications → Force plain text. Plain-text emails are more reliable for deliverability and accessibility but lose visual formatting.
Suppression #
To pause all core notifications without disabling them individually:
- Go to Settings → Notifications
- Toggle Pause all notifications
- Set an optional resume date
Useful during planned downtime, migrations, or holiday seasons when you don’t want emails competing for attention.
Notification Audit #
The Notifications page shows a log of recent sends:
- Timestamp
- Notification type
- Recipient
- Delivery status (sent / failed / suppressed)
Useful for confirming notifications are actually firing — if you expected an email and don’t see a log entry, the cron didn’t run; if you see a log entry but didn’t receive, it’s a deliverability issue.
Beyond Core #
If the three core notifications aren’t enough, Pro adds 10 additional notification types (High-Risk Order Alert, Segment Change Alert, Daily Digest, etc.) and the full automation engine for arbitrary custom notifications. See Pro Notification Types.
