If your WordPress LMS site offers recurring memberships through WooCommerce Subscriptions, you’ve likely felt the gap: no built-in way to notify users when their trial is ending or a renewal is coming up. Until now, that kind of reminder system required third-party plugins, custom code, or workarounds.
That’s changed with the release of WooCommerce Subscriptions 6.9.0 (November 2024), which quietly introduced native subscription notifications—a long-requested feature that finally brings basic reminder emails into core.
The new feature lets you send automated emails to users when a subscription is about to renew, when a trial period is ending, or when a subscription is expiring. Each of these reminders can be scheduled a set number of days in advance and customized through the same email template system WooCommerce already uses.
For LMS platforms that rely on memberships, this means you can now provide clear, proactive communication to your users without relying on external tools or automations. Trial users are less likely to churn because they “forgot it would renew,” and members nearing expiration get a heads-up in time to take action.
This is especially helpful for developers and site managers trying to keep things lean. The feature is native, no setup is required beyond enabling and editing the templates, and it works the same way as other transactional emails. It’s predictable, and it works.
There is one caveat with this new feature (that we hope will change), which is that you can only send one reminder per event. If your membership strategy relies on sequences—like multiple warnings before cancellation or tiered win-back campaigns—you’ll still want to layer in tools like AutomateWoo or WP Fusion. But for the common case of “just let users know what’s happening with their subscription,” this new feature fills the gap nicely.
For WordPress LMS sites that sell subscriptions or memberships, this is one more step toward making WooCommerce Subscriptions a more complete and reliable membership tool—one that works better out of the box for WordPress LMS sites.
