HappenBoard sends attendees two emails on its own: a confirmation when they sign up, and a reminder before the event. Both are controlled from HappenBoard → Settings → Email.
The two emails
Confirmation
Sent the moment a sign-up is recorded. The subject reads You’re confirmed: followed by the event title. The body greets the person by name, confirms the event, gives the start date and time in your site’s format when the event has one, and offers a View event details button back to the event page.
Underneath sits the personal cancellation link. It appears only in this email, which is what makes attendee self-cancellation work. Turn confirmations off and nobody ever receives that link.
Reminder
Subject: Reminder: followed by the event title and a note that it is coming up. Same greeting, same start time, same button back to the event. No cancellation link.
The reminder is scheduled the moment someone signs up, for a fixed number of hours before the start. Two consequences worth knowing:
- If that moment has already passed when the person signs up, no reminder is scheduled. Last-minute sign-ups get the confirmation only.
- Changing the lead time later applies to new sign-ups. Reminders already booked keep the timing they were given.
When the reminder fires, HappenBoard re-reads the attendee row and only sends if the status is still Going. Someone who cancelled in the meantime is not reminded.
Reminders ride on WP-Cron, which WordPress triggers on site traffic. A site that gets no visitors for a while can fire its reminder late.
The settings
Under Notifications:
- Send confirmation email on RSVP / ticket purchase: on by default.
- Send reminder email before each event: on by default.
- Send reminder hours before start: a slider from 1 to 168 hours, 24 by default. It only appears when reminders are on.
A hundred and sixty-eight hours is a full week, so the slider covers anything from a same-day nudge to a week’s notice.
Who the email comes from
Under Sender identity, all three fields are optional. Left blank, HappenBoard uses the WordPress defaults from Settings → General.
- From name: the display name in the inbox. Ignored unless a From email is also set.
- From email: the sending address. HappenBoard only overrides the sender when this holds a valid address, and if the name field is empty it uses your site title.
- Reply-To: where replies land.
The reply address is chosen in a set order. The Reply-To setting wins whenever it holds a valid address. Otherwise HappenBoard looks at the event’s organizer and uses their email, which is what you want when different people run different events. If neither exists, no reply address is set and replies go wherever your mail host sends them.
One caution about the From address: many hosts refuse to deliver mail claiming to come from a domain they do not handle. Use an address on your own domain, or a transactional email plugin.
Format
Both emails go out as HTML with a plain text version attached, so they stay readable in clients that refuse HTML. The look is shared by every notification and is set once in the email branding settings, where you can also preview each template before saving.
What is not sent
The free plugin sends these two attendee emails and no others. In particular, cancelling a sign-up sends nothing, whether the attendee cancels it themselves or you cancel it from the Attendees screen. If someone needs to know, tell them.
With Pro, notifications can be sent in each attendee’s own language, which is covered in emails in the attendee’s language.