Cancellation notification emails stopped after hosting migration

#1

I’m hoping you can help me understand a behavior change with cancellation notifications.

Plugin: s2Member Pro (Stripe Pro-Forms)
Theme: Divi
Mailer: WP Mail SMTP (Microsoft 365/Outlook)
Mail log: WP Mail Logging enabled

What changed:

We’ve run s2Member Pro successfully for ~10 years.
Yesterday we migrated hosting to GoDaddy Web Hosting Ultimate (cPanel). The site is behind GoDaddy’s Website Security (Sucuri WAF).

After migration, cancellation notification emails stopped . Everything else still emails normally.

What still works:

  • Registration , New Member , Login details , and EOT/Deletion emails are all being sent and appear in WP Mail Logging (delivered by 365/Outlook).

Stripe events are received and processed: subscriptions are created and can be canceled; EOT demotes/deletes at end of term as expected.

What no longer works:

"(s2Member / API Notification Email) – Cancellation” email is not sent when a member cancels.

*Nothing shows in WP Mail Logging for the cancellation event (so it doesn’t look like a deliverability problem, it looks like it isn’t being generated).

How we reproduce:

  1. Create a test Level 2 subscription using an s2Member Stripe Pro-Form .
  2. As the test member, visit the cancellation page and submit the cancellation.
  3. We see the “ Billing termination confirmed ” message.
  4. In Stripe, the subscription shows Canceled immediately.
  5. Expected: s2Member sends the “API Notification Email – Cancellation” to the admin.
    *Actual: No cancellation email is sent and nothing is logged by WP Mail Logging.

Canonical/SSL state with new hosting (same as old hosting in case it matters)

After the migration we also addressed canonical mismatches:

Enforced HTTP → HTTPS and www → non-www redirects (AutoSSL + cPanel 301 redirect + WAF cache purge).

All protected pages now behave correctly, and these redirects are working.

Questions for you

  1. Under what conditions should s2Member send the “API Notification Email – Cancellation” ?
  • Does it send regardless of whether the “Cancellation Notification URLs” field is populated, similar to signup/registration/EOT emails?

  1. Is there anything in the cancellation flow that could be affected by a WAF/CDN or canonical redirect (e.g., a local loopback request, admin-ajax call, or referrer check)?

  2. Are there specific debug logs you’d like us to enable in s2Member → Log Files (Debug) to capture the cancellation event so we can send you the output?

  3. Is there a known issue with certain hosting/WAF configurations that would prevent s2Member from sending the cancellation notification email while other event emails still send?

Timeline

Last known cancellation email arrived around 11:30am ET on Monday (before migration).
Immediately after the migration , cancellations no longer produced the admin notification email.
Other s2Member emails (Registration/EOT/etc.) continued to work.

Thanks in advance for any guidance or known fixes. This is a huge problem for a subscription website as we need to be able to track when users X their service with us.

Thank you for your help.

#2

Thanks for all those details.

" A Cancellation is triggered when you cancel a Customer’s Subscription through your Payment Gateway, or when a Customer cancels their own Subscription." WP Admin > s2Member > API / Notificaitons > Cancellation Notification

Is there anything in the cancellation flow that could be affected by a WAF/CDN or canonical redirect (e.g., a local loopback request, admin-ajax call, or referrer check)?

As long at the Stripe webhook reaches your s2Member endpoint with all the data, it shoudl be fine.

  • Are there specific debug logs you’d like us to enable in s2Member → Log Files (Debug) to capture the cancellation event so we can send you the output?

The Stripe and Core IPN logs.

Is there a known issue with certain hosting/WAF configurations that would prevent s2Member from sending the cancellation notification email while other event emails still send?

Not that I know.

Last known cancellation email arrived around 11:30am ET on Monday (before migration).
Immediately after the migration , cancellations no longer produced the admin notification email.
Other s2Member emails (Registration/EOT/etc.) continued to work.

The WP Mail is working, obviously. I suppose your Cancellation Notification is still configured and not blank.

My main suspicion would be the Stripe webhook or data not reaching s2Member, that’s why I’d like to see those logs.

:slight_smile:

#3

GoDaddy is like the worst choice for hosting anything, go for a wordpress dedicated hosting or get a virtual server/root server. It’s been that way as long as I can remember.

3 Likes
#4

I agree!

VPS + LEMP stack

I like https://www.linuxbabe.com/ubuntu/install-lemp-stack-ubuntu-22-04-server-desktop and other tutorials (I am not related at all with them, it’s just my base reference point when doing those things).

Also, remember that things like Google AdSense and Google Analytics are extremely heavy and you lose a LOT of points on performance scores, meaning you’ll rank lower on search engines (ironically) and have to bother with cookie rules.

If you don’t track what people do, you don’t need to ask for permission to do that.

Those are my two cents. Hopefully helpful ones. :innocent:

#5

Since we’re talking about cancellations, can you add, on a future update, a protective mechanism that does NOT cancel a subscription if the “new” subscription that “collides” with an “existing” one has the same cus and sub id? Same problem happens with PayPal, by the way!

Stripe will sometimes send two or more IPNs per subscription, specially when we host with slow servers and the handshakes fail. I frequently saw new subscriptions triggering the anti duplicate mechanism of s2member. My personal solution was to neuter the entire cancellation routine and this is the main reason I didn’t update my plugin yet. :grimacing:

#6

DItto, running your own root server is the only way to go. There is nothing beyond my view and control.