While trying new plugins can unearth hidden gems in the WooCommerce world, there are certain plugins that are better to stay away from. One such plugin is Follow Up Emails. The plugin sends follow up emails based on different triggers (e.g., if a customer purchased a specific product, a customer created a new subscription to a product or plan, and so on).
The custom database tables created by the plugin are as follows;
wp_followup_coupons
wp_followup_coupon_logs
wp_followup_customers
wp_followup_customer_carts
wp_followup_customer_notes
wp_followup_customer_orders
wp_followup_email_excludes
wp_followup_email_logs
wp_followup_email_orders
wp_followup_email_tracking
wp_followup_followup_history-
wp_followup_order_categories-
wp_followup_order_items
wp_followup_subscribers-
wp_followup_subscribers_to_lists
wp_followup_subscriber_lists
Follow Up Emails plugin for WooCommerce heavily uses the Action Scheduler, which is built into WooCommerce core. The Action Scheduler’s role is as a job queue to run background tasks, but it means those Scheduled Action posts and comments will end up bloating the site database. The Action Scheduler is a good idea, in part, for what it is trying to solve; but the way it ends up working can be a total mess. The Follow Up Email plugin uses up to 1GB or more of data in the site database. When used on an active site with orders, the plugin bloats the comments, comment meta, posts, and post meta database tables. If the store being used has fewer orders and follow up emails that need to be set, the data being stored in its custom database tables might lower in size.
The Follow Up Emails database tables can be dropped from the site’s database after a site database has been created and the plugin has been deactivated and then deleted from the site.
You can replace the Follow Up Emails plugin by using Mailchimp, or a similar dedicated provider, and then set up an automation flow so new follow up emails are sent using MailChimp. This will save you from the mess of those emails being sent out using the site’s database.
Abandoned cart emails from Follow Up Emails can be replaced with the one set up in MailChimp as well.
Being aware of which WooCommerce plugins can cause site issues means you can replace the less efficient plugins with other methods that do not cause site issues.
2 thoughts on “Why the Follow Up Emails WooCommerce Plugin Will Cause Site Issues”
I was one of the “victims” of this plugin, only because WooCommerce Subscriptions cannot handle its own reminders. I stumbled upon this little plugin and it works even better, plus it doesn’t have recurring fees: http://qwebmaster.com/woocommerce-subscriptions-renewal-reminder/
The range of functions was attractive, not only to send membership mails and to send better designed mails for Sensei. But we never got as far as the database problems described above. Even before that we threw the plugin out before we went live. Why?
– the design of the mails is extremely difficult to change, or better said: actually it is almost impossible to change it in a reasonable way
– for some mysterious reason, there was a sudden and uncontrolled sending of mails to recipients who had received them long before
– the unsubscribe page looked like it had just been thrown out lovelessly. The error message there was programmed in white font on a white background and was not accessible for us with CSS. No customer could have ever read it. At the same time this page pulled a sidebar from somewhere uncontrollably – if you hid it with CSS, it was gone on the whole website.
– in the mails sent by the plugin there was an unsubscribe link, like … domain.com/unsubscribe. After an update, there was suddenly an endless hashcode, which disturbed the whole conversion of the mail, even in the text version, so that the mails were practically unreadable.
Yes, and of course, there is a support. It was really very friendly. But that was it, none of the problems were solved. When I wanted to release a request again on the fourth day, I couldn’t do that for 24 hours, because “something went wrong”.
Then I deleted the plugin … wasted time, wasted money.
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