Many sites need to send transactional emails when an event occurs, such as a welcome message after a sign-up, a coupon on a customer's birthday, or a satisfaction survey following a refund. Triggered emails are Wix's mechanism for sending emails from code. A Wix user or collaborator creates a template in the dashboard, then you trigger it from code with the recipient's contact or member ID and the values that fill in the template's variables.
Triggered emails are distinct from several other related Wix features:
- Marketing emails are broadcast campaigns sent to lists of contacts at once, managed entirely from the dashboard.
- Automations are no-code workflows that send emails in response to configured events. They cover many of the same scenarios as triggered emails but without writing code.
- Feature-specific email senders are dedicated APIs that some business solutions expose for their own emails, such as Wix Stores sending receipts or Wix Gift Cards delivering gift cards. These don't use triggered email templates.
- 3rd-party email services integrated from backend code can send arbitrary transactional emails that don't fit any of the above, such as with the SendGrid npm package.
Sites share a monthly email-sending quota between marketing campaigns and triggered emails. Triggered emails count toward that quota, but unlike marketing campaigns, they aren't blocked when the quota is reached.
A triggered email has 2 parts that work together:
- A template in the dashboard. A Wix user designs the email body and subject in the Triggered Emails area of the dashboard. Templates can include variables as placeholders for per-recipient values, like the recipient's name or an order total.
- A trigger from code. Code calls
triggeredEmails.emailContact() or emailMember() in the Triggered Emails SDK with the template's name, the recipient's contact or member ID, and the values for the template's variables. Wix renders the template with the variable values filled in and sends it to the recipient. The Triggered Emails SDK is the only programmatic API for this feature. emailContact() sends only to the current visitor. emailMember() sends only to the current member.
The development path determines how you use triggered emails:
- Sites: Create templates in the site dashboard, then trigger them through the Triggered Emails SDK.
- Wix-managed headless projects: Create templates in the project dashboard, then trigger them from your headless frontend through the Triggered Emails SDK when a visitor or member is authenticated on the page.
- Self-managed headless projects: Templates may be available in the project dashboard, but without Wix-managed frontend authentication, triggering them through the SDK isn't practical. Integrate a 3rd-party transactional email service instead.
- Wix-managed apps: Triggered emails aren't a practical fit for most apps. You can't ship templates with your app or create them through the API, and the Triggered Emails SDK only sends to the current visitor or member on the host site. If you use them anyway, a Wix user or collaborator on the host site must create and publish a template in Developer Tools > Triggered Emails on each installing site, then provide the template's email ID to your app.
- Self-managed apps: Triggered emails aren't a practical fit for most apps. You can't ship templates with your app or create them through the API, and the Triggered Emails SDK only sends to the current visitor or member on the host site. If you use them anyway, a Wix user or collaborator on the host site must create and publish a template in Developer Tools > Triggered Emails on each installing site, then provide the template's email ID to your app.
- Blocks apps: Triggered emails aren't a practical fit for most apps. You can't ship templates with your app or create them through the API, and the Triggered Emails SDK only sends to the current visitor or member on the host site. If you use them anyway, a Wix user or collaborator on the host site must create and publish a template in Developer Tools > Triggered Emails on each installing site and enter the template's email ID in your widget's settings panel, so your app can call the SDK to trigger it.