How do I send an email when the membership level is changed?

With s2Member, you can set up your site so that when a user registers, they must be manually approved before they can login and access their membership account. A common scenario would be if your users prefer to send payment through cash or check instead of one of the supported payment gateways (Paypal, Stripe, Authorize.Net, ClickBank) options. Manually approving user roles is discussed in this article.

If you want to automatically send an email to your members when their user role has been changed by an Administrator from the WordPress Dashboard, i.e. an upgrade/downgrade of their membership level, this is possible but it requires a small bit of custom code.

NOTE: This article does not apply to the Billing Modification Form which sends its own email when the user modifies their own account using a Billing Modification Form. See: WordPress Dashboard → s2Member → [Payment Gateway] Options → Modification Confirmation Email (Standard/Pro Form).

By default, s2Member doesn't send any emails when a User Role is changed by an Administrator from the WordPress Dashboard. However, you can send an email when this happens by creating an MU-Plugin and sending an email using the wp_mail() function. WordPress sends email using wp_mail() similar to PHP’s mail(). It is a way for your site to send user an email message via PHP script.

NOTE: If you are not familiar with MU (Must Use) Plugins or customizing s2Member with Hooks and Filters, read this article.

Create this directory and file: /wp-content/mu-plugins/s2-role-change-handler.php

<?php
add_action('init', 's2_role_change_event_handler::init', 1);

class s2_role_change_event_handler
{
    public static $user_id;
    public static $user_old_role;

    public static function init()
    {
        global $pagenow;

        if (!is_admin()) {
            return; // Not applicable.
        }
        if ($pagenow !== 'user-edit.php') {
            return; // Not applicable.
        }
        if (empty($_REQUEST['user_id'])) {
            return; // Not applicable.
        }
        if (!current_user_can('edit_users')) {
            return; // Not applicable.
        }
        $user = new WP_User((int) $_REQUEST['user_id']);

        static::$user_id       = $user->ID;
        static::$user_old_role = reset($user->roles);

        add_action('set_user_role', 's2_role_change_event_handler::event', 10, 2);
    }

    public static function event($user_id, $new_role)
    {
        if ($user_id === static::$user_id && $new_role !== static::$user_old_role) {
            if (($user = new WP_User($user_id)) && $user->exists()) {
                // Replace $subject, $message, $headers with your information
                $subject = 'User Role Update';
                $message = 'Hello '.$user->first_name.'!'."\r\n"."\r\n".'This is to notify you that your User Role has been changed to "'.$new_role.'".';
                $headers = 'From: Awesome Site <hello@awesomesite.com>'; 
                wp_mail($user->user_email, $subject, $message, $headers);
            }
        }
    }
}

For more details on WP User Class, see Class Reference/WP User

How do I send an email when the membership level is changed?

See also: