Eventonomy

Reminders & SMS

Eventonomy sends event reminder emails on the Free plan, with zero configuration: every confirmed attendee is reminded 1 day and 1 hour before the event starts. Eventonomy Pro adds custom reminder timing, custom email templates, and SMS notifications via Twilio.

Notifications settings panel showing the SMS and Reminders feature cards

What You Will Learn

  • How the built-in Free reminders work (and why there is nothing to configure)
  • How to change the reminder offsets with a filter
  • What the reminder email contains
  • What Pro adds: custom timing, templates, and SMS via Twilio
  • Why reminders depend on your site's cron running

Event Reminders (Free)

Reminders are on by default. Go to Eventonomy → Settings → Notifications → Event reminders to confirm the toggle is on; that is the entire setup. Attendees with a Going RSVP receive a reminder email 1 day before the event starts, and again 1 hour before.

How it works under the hood:

  • An hourly sweep (evnm_send_reminders) runs via Action Scheduler when it is available on your site, otherwise via WP-Cron.
  • The sweep finds published events with an occurrence starting inside each reminder window and queues the emails in background batches, so a large attendee list never slows a page load.
  • Each attendee is reminded exactly once per occurrence per offset; re-running the sweep never double-sends.
  • For recurring events, the reminder is about the specific upcoming occurrence, with its own date and add-to-calendar links.
  • For online events, the reminder includes the join link; reminders only go to confirmed registrants, so the link never reaches anyone else.
  • All of Eventonomy's scheduled jobs run under a dedicated eventonomy Action Scheduler group (Pro's jobs use eventonomy-pro), so you can find and filter them under Tools → Scheduled Actions when Action Scheduler is installed.

Reminder emails are notification-class mail: they carry a one-click unsubscribe link, and recipients who opted out are skipped automatically. See Unsubscribe & Suppression.

What the Reminder Email Contains

The reminder is built for you, with no template editing required. Every reminder carries:

  • Subject - "Reminder: [Event Name] starts [when]". For an event with no title, it falls back to "Reminder: your event starts [when]".
  • Heading - "Your event is coming up".
  • Opening line - "This is a reminder that [Event Name] ([date]) starts [when]. We look forward to seeing you there."
  • Event details - the occurrence's date and the venue name, shown together on one line. Only the parts you have filled in appear, so an event with no venue simply shows the date.
  • Join link (online events only) - a prominent Join the event online link. Reminders only go to confirmed registrants, so this link is never exposed to anyone who did not register.
  • View the event - a link back to the event page.
  • Add-to-calendar links - Google, Outlook, Office 365, and a downloadable .ics file. For a recurring event these point at the specific upcoming occurrence being reminded about, not the series.
  • Unsubscribe footer - reminders are notification-class mail, so every one carries a one-click unsubscribe link.

"Starts Today" and "Starts Tomorrow"

The "starts ..." phrase changes wording depending on how close the event is:

How far away the event is What the email says
Less than 24 hours starts Today
Between 24 and 48 hours starts Tomorrow
Further out starts in 3 days, and so on

This is a 1.3.0 change. Previously the 1-hour and 1-day reminders read as awkward machine phrasing such as "starts in 23 hours" or "starts in 1 day". A reminder sent an hour before the doors open now reads "Reminder: Summer Meetup starts Today", which is how a person would actually say it. Nothing else about the reminder changed, and there is nothing to configure - the wording is picked automatically from how close the start time is.

Changing the Reminder Timing (Developers)

The default offsets (1 day and 1 hour, in seconds) come from the reminder_offsets setting and are filterable via evnm_reminder_offsets:

// Remind 3 days and 2 hours before the start instead.
add_filter( 'evnm_reminder_offsets', function ( $offsets ) {
    return array( 3 * DAY_IN_SECONDS, 2 * HOUR_IN_SECONDS );
} );

Site owners who want a timing UI instead of code get one with Pro (below).

The reminder email subject and body can be customized via the evnm_email_subject / evnm_email_body filters using $email_key = 'event_reminder', or with Pro's custom email templates.

Reminders Depend on Cron

Note: Reminders (like all scheduled work in WordPress) only fire when your site's cron runs. By default WP-Cron piggybacks on page visits, which is fine for most sites, but a very low-traffic site can miss a reminder window because nobody visited during it. Two fixes: install a plugin that provides Action Scheduler (WooCommerce ships it, and Eventonomy uses it automatically when present), or point a real server cron at wp-cron.php every 5 minutes and set DISABLE_WP_CRON to true. The Setup & Health screen warns you when scheduled jobs appear stalled.

What Pro Adds to Reminders

Pro - Custom reminder timing, custom templates, and SMS require Eventonomy Pro.

With Pro active, the Event reminders card gains a timing field, Send the reminder this many hours before the event starts (default 24). It replaces the 1-day-plus-1-hour baseline rather than adding to it: set it to 3 and attendees get exactly one reminder, three hours out.

There is still only one reminder job. Free owns the hourly sweep whether or not Pro is installed, and Pro simply swaps in your configured lead time, so there is no second schedule and nothing can double-send.

Pro reminders can also be styled with the Custom email templates feature and delivered by SMS.

SMS Notifications via Twilio (Pro)

Pro - SMS notifications require Eventonomy Pro.

Eventonomy Pro can send SMS messages to attendees who gave a phone number. In this release the event reminder is the notification that carries an SMS body, so that is what arrives as a text; every other notification still goes out by email (and, for signed-in members, to the in-app feed).

Enabling SMS

  1. Go to Eventonomy → Settings → Notifications → SMS notifications.
  2. Toggle SMS notifications on.
  3. Enter your Twilio Account SID, Twilio Auth Token, and Twilio "from" number (in E.164 format, e.g. +14155551234).
  4. Save changes.

Numbers are normalised and validated as E.164 before Twilio is called, so a badly formatted number is refused locally rather than being billed as a failed send.

Phone Number Collection

When SMS is active, an optional Phone number field is added to the RSVP and checkout forms. Attendees who provide a phone number receive SMS messages in addition to email.

The phone number field is:

  • Optional by default: attendees can skip it.
  • Stored against the RSVP/order record, not the WordPress user profile.
  • Never exposed in REST API responses (treated as a secret alongside the RSVP email).

Which Events Trigger an SMS

Trigger Message content
Event reminder "Reminder: {event title} is coming up." (falls back to "Reminder: your event is coming up." on an event with no title)

The event reminder is currently the only notification that sends an SMS. RSVP confirmations, cancellations and other notifications go out by email (and, for signed-in members, to the in-app feed) but do not send a text message.

The text is deliberately short - it names the event but not the start time or venue, because text messages are billed per segment.

SMS content can be customized via the NotificationChannelInterface; see Extending.

What's Next?

Design custom HTML templates for each email type (Pro).

Email Templates →