Choose the right sharing channels for your store

Not every channel suits every store. Rather than enabling all four by default, consider who your customers are and how they communicate.

• Retail / gift stores: both email and WhatsApp work well because customers often seek approval from others before purchasing. For example, family members can send a cart to parents for purchase. Friends can seek the opinion of others before placing an order.
• Trade / B2B stores: email is a great option; it creates a paper trail and feels more formal. Consider enabling Copy Link so buyers can paste the cart into a message or document.
• Mobile-first stores: SMS and WhatsApp tend to perform better when most of your traffic comes from mobile devices.
• Simplicity: fewer options means a cleaner, less overwhelming modal. If in doubt, start with two channels and add more later. When exactly two channels are enabled, the modal displays them with a clear “or” divider between them.

Set a sensible link expiry

The default expiry of 72 hours (three days) works well for most general retail stores. Consider adjusting it based on your situation:

• Shorter expiry (24–48 hours): better for stores with fast-moving stock or limited availability, where a stale cart link could lead to disappointment at checkout.
• Longer expiry (7 days or more): suitable for made-to-order, bespoke, or slower-purchasing categories where customers take more time to decide.
• Very long expiry: avoid setting this too high; old cart links that restore discontinued or out-of-stock products create a confusing customer experience.

The expiry date is always included in the sharing email, so recipients know how long they have to act.

Customise the sharing email

The default email body is functional but generic. Rewriting it in your store’s voice makes a noticeable difference to how professional the email feels. The email already includes the cart link, the expiry date, and the sender’s name and the name of your store, so you don’t need to repeat those.

Use an SMTP plugin

For best deliverability, install an SMTP email plugin. WordPress sends email via PHP’s mail() function by default, which many hosting providers restrict or disable entirely. Even when it works, emails sent this way can land in spam because they lack proper authentication.

An SMTP plugin will route all WordPress email (including Share My Cart sharing emails) through a proper mail server with authentication

Use a dedicated email address

For a more professional appearance, use a dedicated address such as hello@your-store.com or noreply@your-store.com. Emails sent from a matching domain are less likely to be caught by spam filters, and the From name (your store name) will display more reliably in the recipient’s inbox.

Configure your DNS setting for mail deliverability

Three DNS records make the biggest difference to deliverability:

SPF: declares which mail servers are allowed to send on behalf of your domain.

DKIM: adds a cryptographic signature to outgoing mail, allowing the recipient’s server to verify the message hasn’t been tampered with.

DMARC: tells receiving servers what to do if SPF or DKIM checks fail (quarantine or reject).

Using the icon button style

The icon-only button works well when you want a lighter visual presence on the cart page. For example, if you already have a visually busy cart layout, or when the “Share My Cart” label feels too wordy.

A few tips for icon buttons:
Choose a recognisable icon. A share arrow or network symbol communicates the action clearly without any text. Abstract icons can confuse customers.

• Add your own. Drop any .png, .jpg, .jpeg, or .svg file into the plugin’s assets/icons/ folder and it will appear in the settings picker immediately — no code required. This is the easiest way to use a custom icon that matches your store’s visual style.
• Landscape icons display at their natural proportions. The icon is sized at 32px tall with width scaled automatically, so wide icons will not be distorted.
• The icon button always includes an ARIA label (“Share My Cart”) for screen reader accessibility even though no visible text is shown.

Restricting sharing to logged-in customers

The ‘Limit to Logged-In Users’ setting hides the Share button entirely for guests. This is worth enabling for:

• Trade / wholesale stores where sharing is a feature for account holders only.
• Stores with invite-only or restricted access, where you don’t want anonymous visitors generating cart links.

Note that this only controls the Share button itself. A cart link generated by a logged-in customer can still be followed by anyone — the recipient does not need an account to load the shared cart.

What the recipient experiences

When a recipient clicks a shared cart link, the plugin silently restores the cart contents in the background and then redirects them to the cart page: no error pages, no manual steps. If any items are out of stock or no longer available, they are simply skipped rather than causing a failure, so the recipient always lands on a usable cart.

Recipients do not need an account. Any logged-in session they already have is unaffected. Shared items are added alongside whatever is already in their cart.

Using Share My Cart with Tear Sheets

If you use both of these WooCommerce extensions, it is worth understanding where they overlap and where they differ.

Both plugins can share a cart with someone else. Tear Sheets does this via a QR code printed on the cart tear sheet — scanning it restores the cart on any device. Share My Cart does it via a direct link sent through email, WhatsApp, SMS, or copied to the clipboard.

The key difference is context:

• Tear Sheets is suited to formal or printed scenarios: a PDF quote, a product catalogue, a printout left with a client. The QR code is a convenience feature within that document.
• Share My Cart is suited to instant digital sharing: a quick message to a friend, a link forwarded in a group chat, or an email sent directly from the cart page without any PDF involved.

In practice, the two plugins work well together. A customer might use Share My Cart to send a live link for immediate action, while a sales team member could use Tear Sheets to produce a branded PDF for a follow-up meeting. The shared cart mechanism in each plugin is independent, so both can be active without conflict.