Tiger Booking keeps customers and staff informed with branded email notifications across the whole booking lifecycle, and sends them reliably over your own SMTP server. All of that is in the free plugin. SMS is not — text messaging is part of the Tiger Booking Pro add-on.
Where: WP Admin → Tiger Booking → Settings → Notifications.
Lifecycle emails
Notifications are grouped per active booking engine and split into customer emails and admin alerts. Switch each one on or off independently, so you send only what your business needs.
For appointments the customer set is Booking Confirmation, Booking Reminders, Cancellation Confirmation, Payment Receipt, Post-Booking Follow-up and Review Request. Admins can be alerted on New Booking, Cancellation, Payment Received and New Review.
The Hotels engine adds its own equivalents — reservation confirmation, check-in reminder, check-out confirmation, room change/upgrade, plus daily check-in and check-out digests for admins. Those only appear once the Tiger Booking Pro add-on has put the Hotels engine on the site; on the free plugin the Notifications screen shows the appointment set alone.
The two payment-related emails (Payment Receipt and the admin Payment Received alert) are listed on every build, but they are triggered by an online payment completing — something the free plugin, which ships no payment gateway, never does.
Editing a template
Open any notification to edit its content. Each template offers three tabs:
- Plain Text — a simple text version.
- HTML — the full branded HTML body, with merge tags such as
{{clientName}},{{serviceName}},{{date}},{{amount}}and{{bookingId}}. - Preview — a live render so you can check it before saving.
You can also set the subject line and, for admin alerts, choose whether they go to the Default Admin Email or a Custom Email address.
Mail delivery (SMTP)
The Email Delivery card controls how every notification is actually sent. It is in the free plugin in full. Pick a provider:
- System Default — your server’s built-in PHP mail. Fine for testing, but often lands in spam.
- SMTP — send through a real mailbox or a service such as Gmail, SendGrid, Mailgun or SES.
For both, set the From Name and From Email — use an address on your own domain for the best deliverability. Choosing SMTP reveals the connection fields:
- SMTP Host — e.g.
smtp.gmail.com. - Port — usually
587for TLS or465for SSL. - Encryption — TLS, SSL or None.
- Username — usually your full email address.
- Password — for Gmail or Outlook use an app password. It is stored server-side, and neither it nor the username is ever sent to the public booking widget.
Send a test
Use Send test to email yourself and confirm the connection works. Save first so the server uses the latest settings; the result tells you which provider it went through and where. A send log and per-template stats let you monitor real deliveries afterwards. There is a second, simpler test on Tiger Booking → Tools, which sends a sample booking invoice through wp_mail().
SMS notifications (Pro add-on)
Texting a customer when their booking is confirmed runs through your own Twilio account, and the code that does it is not in the free wordpress.org download.
- Free plugin — there is no SMS notifications switch under Settings → Features and no Twilio credentials card anywhere. The switch declares an SMS requirement, so the Features panel does not draw a toggle this build could not honour. Nothing is greyed out; it simply is not there.
- Pro add-on — installing it alongside the free plugin brings the SMS subsystem with it. Switch SMS notifications on under Settings → Features (it is off by default), then enter your Account SID, Auth Token and From Number in the Twilio card on Settings → Payments. Messages go directly from your site to Twilio; the credentials are never sent to the browser.
A site that once ran Pro with SMS switched on and later dropped back to the free plugin keeps the stored setting but resolves it to off, so no dead control is left behind and nothing on the server believes SMS is live.
Troubleshooting
Emails aren’t arriving.
Switch delivery to SMTP rather than System Default, use a From Email on your own domain, and run Send test — the error points straight at the misconfigured field. If the test succeeds but real notifications do not arrive, check that the individual notification is switched on for that engine.
I can’t find the SMS or Twilio settings.
They are part of the Tiger Booking Pro add-on. Install it alongside the free plugin — you do not remove or replace what you are already running — then enable SMS notifications under Settings → Features.
I only see appointment notifications.
That is the full set for the free plugin. Hotel, restaurant, fitness and rental notifications appear when the Pro add-on puts those engines on the site and you switch them on.
Time-based emails don’t fire.
Scheduled sends depend on WordPress cron. On a low-traffic site, wire up a real system cron so they go out on time rather than waiting for the next visitor.