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Joomla Follow Up Email Automation

Send the right follow-up email automatically. From every part of your Joomla site.

A customer places an order, a visitor submits a form, a subscription renews, an article is about to expire. Follow Up Emails turns each of those events into a scheduled email: a thank-you an hour later, a review request two weeks on, a reminder three days before a date, a birthday mail every year. You build the rule once. The scheduler does the rest.

Get Follow Up Emails PRO - €29
See how it works
Joomla 5 & 6 ready Event-based & date-based One license, all client sites
The problem

Still sending follow-up emails by hand?

Joomla sends the transactional basics: an order confirmation, a registration email. After that, nothing. Every email that actually builds repeat business is on you to remember and send yourself:

  • The thank-you that never goes out. A customer checks out in HikaShop, VirtueMart or J2Commerce. You mean to send a personal thank-you. A week later you remember. The moment has passed.
  • The review request you keep forgetting. The best time to ask is two weeks after purchase. Nobody manually tracks 200 orders and emails each customer on day fourteen.
  • The reminder that should fire before a date. Someone books through a form for the 20th. A reminder three days before would cut no-shows. Joomla cannot schedule that.
  • The renewal and birthday mails that never happen. A yearly congratulations, a renewal warning, a win-back after a cancellation. All high-value, all impossible by hand at scale.
  • A different tool for every system. One cart plugin for HikaShop, another for VirtueMart, a separate mailer for forms, nothing for articles or users. Five tools on every client site.
  • Cron, deduplication and deliverability. Even a script has to run reliably, never send twice, and go out through your own mail server.

The result is the same on every Joomla site you manage: the follow-up emails that drive reviews, repeat orders and retention quietly never get sent.

The hidden cost: a shop that emails every customer a review request 14 days after purchase lifts review volume and repeat orders measurably. Skipping it costs nothing today and a little revenue on every single order, forever.

The solution

How Follow Up Emails solves this. In three steps.

1. Build a template

Write the email once: a subject and an HTML body with placeholders like {name}, {order_number} or {product_name}. A shared wrapper gives every follow-up your header, footer and logo. Reusable across every rule.

2. Create a rule

Pick a trigger source, choose the event or the date to watch, set the timing (immediately, 2 hours later, 3 days before), and choose who receives it. No code, no cron scripting.

3. The scheduler sends it

Every email lands in a queue with its own send date. Joomla's scheduler processes the queue in batches. A unique message ID guarantees the same email is never queued twice. Set up once, then forget it.

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End result: the right email reaches the right person at the right moment, sent through your own Joomla mail server, logged, and impossible to duplicate. Across orders, forms, subscriptions, articles and users, with one tool and one interface.

How it works

One engine, every event on your site

After an event

The email is queued the instant something happens - an order is placed, a form is submitted, a user registers - with an optional delay. Send it immediately, or 2 hours, 3 days or 2 weeks later.

Before or after a date

An hourly scan reads date fields (a form calendar field, an article unpublish date, a subscription end date, a birthday field) and schedules emails relative to that date. Birthday and anniversary fields repeat every year, automatically.

What you get

Everything you need to automate follow-up. Built in.

Visual rule builder

Connect any trigger to any template and any recipient from one screen. Conditions narrow each rule to exactly the orders, forms, products or categories you want.

Reusable email templates

Subject + HTML body with placeholders. Pick a template once and use it in as many rules as you like. Language-aware for multilingual sites.

Time-delayed sending

Send immediately, or after any delay in minutes, hours, days or weeks. Thank-you after an hour, review request after two weeks - two rules, zero maintenance.

Date-based scheduling

Send before or after a date held in a form field, an article publish-down date, a subscription end date or a custom field. Perfect for reminders and expiry warnings.

Yearly birthday emails

Birthday fields repeat every year. The scan always schedules the next anniversary still in the future, so a single rule keeps congratulating customers forever.

Flexible recipients

Send to the person who triggered the event, to fixed addresses (internal notifications), or to a whole Joomla user group. Add a BCC to any rule.

Reliable queue & scheduler

Emails wait in a queue and go out in batches through Joomla's own scheduler. A unique message ID deduplicates per rule, record and recipient.

Logs & full control

Every send is logged with status and error. Reset failed emails to retry, delete pending items to cancel, clean up old logs from the toolbar.
The trigger sources

7 trigger sources. One engine. Pick what your site uses.

A shop runs HikaShop or VirtueMart, a membership site runs ochSubscriptions, a lead-gen site runs RSForm Pro, every site has articles and users. Enable only the trigger plugins you need; the rest stay off.

Task scheduler

Core engine

The engine itself. Two hourly tasks ship ready to run: Process Queue sends due emails, Scan Dates schedules date-based rules. Set up automatically on install.

HikaShop

E-commerce

Order created and order status changed. Filter by status, product, category and first-order-only. Placeholders for order number, invoice, customer and product list.

VirtueMart

E-commerce

Order confirmed at checkout and order status changed. Same conditions as HikaShop, plus the order status name. Ideal for review requests and onboarding.

J2Commerce

E-commerce

Order created and order status changed. Filter by status, product and category. Thank-you, cross-sell and review flows for J2Commerce shops.

RSForm Pro

Forms

After a form submission and after a payment is received. Plus date sources: any calendar, jQuery-calendar or birthday field becomes a before/after-date trigger.

ochSubscriptions

Subscriptions

Subscription saved, purchased and renewed. Filter by product, new status or a precise transition (activated, cancelled, refunded, upgraded). Review, demo, support and documentation links.

Articles

Core content

Article saved, state changed and deleted. Plus date sources: the unpublish date and any calendar custom field. Notify editors, or remind authors before content expires.

Users

Core users

User registered or updated, login, and deletion. Date sources: last visit, any user calendar custom field, and yearly birthday fields. Welcome series and re-engagement.

Use cases

What Joomla webmasters automate with it

Post-purchase review request

E-commerce

HikaShop / VirtueMart / J2Commerce order created → wait 2 weeks → email the customer a review link. The highest-ROI email a shop can automate.

Order thank-you & onboarding

E-commerce

Order created → send immediately → a personal thank-you with {product_name} and next steps. Optionally restrict to first orders only.

Event reminder before a date

Forms

RSForm Pro calendar field → 3 days before the date → remind the registrant. The reminder reschedules itself if the date changes.

Yearly birthday email

Forms / Users

RSForm Pro or user birthday field → on the day → a congratulations. One rule, recurring every year.

Win-back after cancellation

Subscriptions

ochSubscriptions transition cancelled → wait 1 week → a discount offer to win the customer back.

Author reminder before expiry

Content

Article unpublish date → 1 week before → email the author that the article is about to go offline.

Pick your version

Start Free. Go PRO when it matters.

Buy once, install on every client site you build or maintain. No per-domain fees, ever.

Free version

0€

For personal projects and testing the basics. Forever free, no account needed.

  •  Unlimited E-mails
  •  Unlimited Templates
  •  Unlimited Rules
  •  Scheduler plugins
  •  Articles triggers 
  •  User triggers
  •  HikaShop triggers
  •  Virtuemart triggers
  •  J2Commerce triggers
  •  RSForm PRO triggers
  •  ochSubscriptions triggers
Download Free

Follow-up Emails PRO

29€

Per year. Unlimited sites. Cancel anytime.

  •  Unlimited E-mails
  •  Unlimited Templates
  •  Unlimited Rules
  •  Scheduler plugins
  •  Articles triggers 
  •  User triggers
  •  HikaShop triggers
  •  Virtuemart triggers
  •  J2Commerce triggers
  •  RSForm PRO triggers
  •  ochSubscriptions triggers
Buy PRO - €29

Joomill Extensions Bundle

65€

All commercial Joomill extensions in one license. Save €100+

  • Admin Checklist component PRO
  • Autolanguage plugin PRO
  • Client Response Gallery
  • Content Calendar module PRO
  • Custom fields plugins
  • Openinghours module PRO
  • Price List component PRO
  • Reset Hits module
  • RSForm! PRO Notion plugin
  • YOOtheme PRO Elements bundle
Get the Bundle - €65
Jeroen Moolenschot
Personal Support

You email Jeroen. Jeroen emails you back.

Hi, I'm Jeroen Moolenschot. I built Follow Up Emails, I maintain it, and I answer every support ticket personally. I have been a Joomla developer since 2012, I am a JED Listing Expert, and I run 16+ extensions on joomill-extensions.com. If you hit a bug or want a trigger added for another system, you email me and I get back to you - usually within hours.

“Got a reply from Jeroen within 5 minutes.” - Bryan Crenshaw

“Excellent extension and support. A bug was fixed within a few hours.” - Astrid

“Does exactly what it says.” - Justin Thomas

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Do I need the Joomla Task Scheduler?

Yes. Follow Up Emails uses Joomla's built-in scheduler to send the queue. On install it enables the task plugin and creates two hourly tasks for you: Process Queue and Scan Dates. For reliable delivery on quiet sites, point a real cron or webcron at the Joomla scheduler. Want emails faster than hourly? Lower the Process Queue interval to every 5 or 15 minutes.

Which systems can trigger an email?

HikaShop, VirtueMart and J2Commerce orders, RSForm Pro submissions and payments, ochSubscriptions events, Joomla articles, and Joomla users, plus the task scheduler that drives everything. You enable only the trigger plugins you actually use.

Will it ever send the same email twice?

No. Every queued email gets a unique message ID built from the rule, the record and the recipient. If a scan runs twice or an event fires twice, the duplicate is ignored. This is why a rule never mass-mails your history when you first create it.

Can it send an email before a date?

Yes, that is one of its core strengths. Point a rule at a date source (a form calendar field, an article unpublish date, a subscription end date, a custom field) and set the timing to Before. With Recalculate when date changes on, an unsent reminder moves automatically if the underlying date is edited.

Does it work with my e-commerce platform?

If you run HikaShop, VirtueMart or J2Commerce, yes. Trigger on order creation or a status change, filter by product, category or order status, restrict to first orders only, and use placeholders for the order number, customer name and product list.

Can I send to someone other than the customer?

Yes. Any rule can send to the person who triggered the event, to one or more fixed addresses (internal notifications), or to every member of a Joomla user group. You can add a BCC on top of that.

Is one license valid for multiple sites?

Yes. One license covers all your client sites - no per-site fees, no seat limits. The same applies to every Joomill PRO extension.

Which Joomla versions are supported?

Joomla 5 and Joomla 6. PHP 8.2 or newer is required.

What about deliverability and GDPR?

Emails are sent through your own Joomla mail configuration - the same setup that sends your order confirmations. Nothing is routed through a third-party cloud, so your existing privacy policy and mail setup apply. All follow-ups are wrapped in a single Joomla mail template, so you control the branding in one place.

Is there a free version?

Yes. The free version gives you the complete engine, the rule builder, reusable templates, the queue, logs and the scheduler, together with the Articles trigger, so you can automate follow-up emails on Joomla article events at no cost. The six other triggers (HikaShop, VirtueMart, J2Commerce, RSForm Pro, ochSubscriptions and Users) come bundled in one PRO package.

Ready to put your follow-up emails on autopilot?

Build a rule once and the right email goes out at the right moment, on every site you run. Native Joomla, sent through your own mail server.
Download the Free version
Buy PRO - €29
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One license, unlimited sites · Personal support from the developer