In January of 2025, ShipStation introduced a new Customer Notification workflow. "Legacy Customer Notifications" or the "Customer Notification Legacy Workflow" refers to the Customer Notifications workflow on the ShipStation platform prior to January 2025.
How To Check Your Customer Notifications Workflow Type
Merchants with access to the current Customer Notification workflow will see the 'Preview Emails' button at the top left of the Emails tab in their Store Settings.
If you see this please refer to the Customer Notifications Settings guide.
The steps below reference the Legacy Customer Notifications Workflow, if your account was created after January of 2025 please see the Customer Notifications Settings guide.
ShipStation can send two types of emails to your customers to notify them of the status of their order. Shipment Confirmation emails let your customers know when their order has been shipped, and Delivery Notifications emails let them know when it has reached its final destination.
You may prefer to use ShipStation’s customer notification emails instead of your selling channel’s notifications for several reasons. For instance, you can:
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Control when the Shipment Confirmation emails are sent.
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Create custom shipment and delivery email templates using either ShipStation's WYSIWYG or HTML template editor.
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Assign custom email templates at the store level or at the individual order level.
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Assign custom email templates to orders based on unique order criteria using ShipStation's powerful Automation Rules.
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Include links to ShipStation's Branded Tracking Page to keep your customer engaged with your brand even after shipping the order.
The Shipment Notification and Delivery Notification columns in the Shipments tab will display when a customer notification email has been Sent.
ShipStation University Customer Emails Course
If learning by doing is more your style, take the ShipStation University Customer Emails course. This video will show you how to enable customer emails for an individual store and manage your email templates.
A valid email address must be present on the order for ShipStation to send shipment and delivery notifications successfully.
Shipment and delivery notification emails must be enabled at the store level in ShipStation. Your notification email settings will apply to all shipments for orders imported into ShipStation from that store.
You can enable customer notifications in the Emails tab of your store settings:
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Click the Shipment Confirmation Email drop-down menu, then select your desired email template from the list.
To enable delivery notification emails, click the Delivery Notification Email drop-down menu and select your desired email template.
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Click Save Changes to turn on customer notifications.
Repeat the same steps for any store you wish to use ShipStation’s customer notifications. From now on, ShipStation will email shipment confirmations to customers for all orders imported on each store with enabled customer notifications.
To disable customer notification emails, set each drop-down menu to (don't send email) and save your changes.
When you enable customer notifications, ShipStation sends the shipment notification at the same time it sends the marketplace notification. By default, this occurs when you create the label for a shipment. However, you can delay the shipment notifications in each store's Emails settings.
Only the Shipment Confirmation Can Be Delayed
Settings to delay customer notifications only apply to the Shipment Confirmation Email. Currently you cannot delay any delivery notifications. Delivery notifications are triggered only when the carrier alerts ShipStation that the package has been delivered.
To delay notifications:
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Go to the Emails tab in your store settings.
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Select the The first of these conditions is met...
The default behavior for Send marketplace Notification when... is set to when Shipping label is created. To delay the notification you must select one of the conditional options.
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Choose which condition must be met before ShipStation will send the notification.
Condition
Details
The shipment first hits the mail stream
ShipStation will send the notification when the carrier first notifies us it has received and scanned the shipment.
For carriers that electronically submit shipments, this can cause notifications to be sent before the shipment is in possession of the carrier.
This option can only be used for trackable services with carriers that automatically send tracking data back to ShipStation.
When this option is selected, ShipStation also provides the ability to set notification options for any un-tracked services.
At a specific time on the ship date
ShipStation will send the notifications at the specified time. This option uses the account time zone to determine when to send notifications.
Number of hour(s) elapsed after label creation...
ShipStation will send the notifications after the specified number of hours have passed from the time of label creation.
You can choose multiple options and ShipStation will send the notification when the first condition is met.
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Click Save Changes.
These settings will apply to all shipments from now on. Repeat these steps for any store you'd like to use delayed notifications.
ShipStation lets you know if your customer notifications were sent and received successfully with Smart Document Tracking.
Check the Shipment Notification and Delivery Notification columns in the Shipments tab, or the Smart Document Tracking in the Shipment Details screens.
Click on the Shipments tab to view your Shipment or Delivery Notification for your shipment.
If you do not see the Shipment or Delivery Notification columns, click the Columns button to enable those columns.
Check the Shipment Notification and Delivery Notification options. Scroll to view, then click and drag to move the columns to the desired position in your grid.
Successful notifications will appear in and say Notified. Failed notifications will appear and say Failed. Hover your mouse over the failed icon to view a pop-up with details on why the notification failed.
The Notifications option indicates both marketplace and customer notifications. Sent notifications will appear in dark grey and say Sent. If either notification failed, this icon will also include a red dot. Hover your mouse over the icon to view a pop-up with details on which notification failed and why.
Resend Failed Notifications
You can resend failed notifications once the cause of the issue has been addressed.
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If you wish to add multiple email recipients to an order, use the Order Details screen on the Orders grid by clicking the order number and selecting Edit next to Recipient information. Separate each email address with a comma.
Some carriers only allow one email address
While Shipstation supports adding multiple emails for the recipient, some carriers will only accept one email per shipment. To create the label these carriers, you must remove the extra email addresses.
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By default, notifications are sent from the email address Tracking@ShipStation.com unless you enter and verify a company email address in the Email field of your store's Branding tab. Review our What is Branding? article for details.
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If delivery notification emails are enabled, ShipStation will email your customer as soon as the carrier notifies ShipStation that the package has been delivered. Depending on the carrier, this may happen immediately upon drop-off or several hours after the shipment has been delivered.
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Delayed shipment notification emails are only available for services that include automatic tracking updates from the carrier.
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If you want to receive a copy of your customer's email, enter an email address into the Additional Settings field in your store's Emails tab. This will tell ShipStation to add that email address as a BCC on every notification sent to your customers.
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Some selling channels, including Amazon and Walmart, do not allow third-party apps like ShipStation to send email notifications directly to customers. For these selling channels, the email notification options will not be present in the store's Emails settings in ShipStation.
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ShipStation cannot delay the notifications for orders Marked as Shipped or shipments fulfilled through a fulfillment provider.
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If changing from delayed notifications to notify on label creation, ShipStation will not send notifications for shipments already created.
Customize Your Emails
You can extend your brand experience to your customer notifications by creating custom email templates.
Create as many custom templates as you need to take advantage of different branding settings for each store, include specific order and shipment details, or send coupon codes and other special offers.