MageSentinel – Checkout Monitoring for WooCommerce

Find out when your WooCommerce store stops taking orders, before your customers tell you. Every 15 minutes the plugin checks the things that quietly break checkout, and emails you when one turns red:

• no payment method enabled, or one left in test or sandbox mode
• cart or checkout page unpublished or unset
• maintenance mode left on
• a burst of failed payments, or one payment method failing while the others take money
• orders stopped coming in on a store that normally has a steady flow
• SSL certificate close to expiry, slow DNS, a stalled Action Scheduler, WooCommerce fatal errors
• orders that never sent their "New order" email
• card-skimmer scripts injected into pages or settings, PHP files hidden among the uploads, an administrator called "admin"
• Redis or Memcached object cache that stopped answering

Free, no account, and nothing leaves your server. One email per problem, and another when it is fixed. It comes in two parts. The first one is free and needs no account. A health page in your admin. Under the MageSentinel menu you get a plain reading of the things that quietly stop a WooCommerce store from taking money: whether the cart and checkout pages are still set and published, whether any payment method is enabled at all, whether a shipping zone exists, how many fatal errors WooCommerce logged in the last day, whether Action Scheduler is running on time, whether this server's DNS answers quickly (a slow nameserver makes every payment and courier call wait), and whether a WooCommerce database update is waiting. Each row links straight to the screen that fixes it. Email alerts, every 15 minutes. The same checks run on your site every 15 minutes. When one turns red — no payment method, the checkout page unpublished, maintenance mode left on, a pile of failed payments, or orders that stopped coming in when your store normally has a steady flow — you get an email naming the problem and the screen that fixes it, and another when it is fixed. One email per problem, not one per hour. The email goes out through your site's own mail; nothing else leaves your server. Send it to any address, or switch it off. A weekly summary email (optional, off until you switch it on): every Monday, last week's orders, revenue, average order and failed payments against the week before, with the health checks as they stand. Built from your own orders and sent through your site's own mail. These checks read your settings and counts from the inside. They cannot tell whether a shopper can actually pay — a broken payment script, a theme update that hides the button. That is what MageSentinel checkout monitoring is for. A connector for MageSentinel checkout monitoring (optional, paid, 14 days free). MageSentinel walks your storefront the way a customer does — finds a product, adds it to the cart, fills the checkout — and tells you when that stops working. This plugin is the part that runs inside WordPress, so the check can confirm what actually happened in your database instead of guessing from the page. The connector is off by default. Nothing is exposed until you switch it on and paste a token from your MageSentinel dashboard. Once on, it lets MageSentinel:

• read store health — WordPress, WooCommerce and PHP versions, active plugins, enabled payment and shipping methods, order counts, scheduler state. Never order contents, never customer data;
• confirm the test order a check just placed;
• cancel that test order — only if "Test orders" is switched on, and only for an order from a magesentinel+ address, under an hour old and unpaid.

CAPTCHA on your checkout? MageSentinel never solves or gets around a CAPTCHA. If your checkout asks for one, you can switch on Let MageSentinel's checks past your CAPTCHA: requests that carry this store's own connector token are then served without the CAPTCHA, through the CAPTCHA plugin's own allow-list. Every other visitor still gets it. Off by default. Supported: CAPTCHA 4WP (Advanced noCaptcha & invisible Captcha), reCAPTCHA for WooCommerce, hCaptcha for WP and Simple CAPTCHA Alternative with Cloudflare Turnstile. Test orders never reach anyone's inbox: the plugin silences WooCommerce's new, cancelled, failed, on-hold and customer emails for its own orders. Once MageSentinel is connected and checking in, it sends your alerts (email or Slack), so the plugin's own emails pause to spare you duplicates. If MageSentinel stops checking in for three hours, they resume on their own.

1. Install and activate the plugin. WooCommerce must be active.
2. Open MageSentinel in the admin menu. The health page works immediately — no account, no token, nothing to configure. Email alerts go to the site admin address from the first self-check; change the address or switch them off under MageSentinel → Settings.
3. To connect monitoring, go to MageSentinel → Settings, switch the connector on and paste the token from your store's page in the MageSentinel dashboard. The token is stored hashed; it is never shown again.
4. Optionally switch on Test orders so MageSentinel may cancel the orders it places itself. Leave it off and those orders are only ever read.

To disconnect, switch the connector off. The endpoints stop answering at once.

3.10

• The check MageSentinel runs after you update a plugin, theme or WordPress itself now says why it ran: the run shows "Update on the store" in your dashboard, so a failure right after an update is easy to tie to it.

3.9

• New, off by default: test orders through a hidden payment method, for stores that take only cards or PayPal. Only MageSentinel's checks, carrying this store's token, see it; it takes no payment, its orders get no emails, never show in the order list and are cancelled (never deleted) with stock restored within 30 minutes.

3.8

• The lock that keeps two runs of the checks from overlapping now carries an owner token: a run releases only its own lock, never one a later run took over.

3.7

• MageSentinel's own test orders are left out by order id instead of by billing email, so the order queries no longer read the email of every order. The list is built once from the emails and kept up to date as test orders come in.
• The week's sales figures keep the six older days for an hour and read only the last 24 hours on each run. A refund on an older day shows within the hour.
• Stores that keep orders in the posts table read the order total only where revenue is shown.

3.6

• Lighter again: the per-payment-method figures (which could load up to 5,000 orders as objects per run) and the failed/pending counts are now single count queries. A full run of the checks stays at about 35 queries and under 2 MB of memory whatever the order volume.
• On stores that still keep orders in the posts table, date ranges now use the existing index.
• The last-order lookup reads one hour instead of the whole history, and the hour-of-week baseline is kept for six hours.

3.5

• Lighter checks: the sales figures and the "order emails sent" check now ask the database for counts in one query instead of loading every order of the week. The cost of a run no longer grows with the number of orders.
• "Orders stopped" compares the quiet spell with the same hours of the week over the last four weeks, so a quiet night or weekend no longer raises it, and a quiet weekday afternoon raises it sooner.
• Fix: MageSentinel's own test orders no longer count as the store's last order, which could hide a real stop.
• Alert emails separate settings to fix from changes in how the store behaves.
• A run of the checks can no longer start while another is still going.

3.4

• New checks: orders that got no "New order" email; obfuscated card-skimmer scripts in published content and settings (named by place, never printed); PHP files in wp-content/uploads; an administrator called "admin"; a Redis or Memcached object cache that stopped answering. The file scans run twice a day.
• Health checks are grouped in three cards (taking orders, security, platform), problems first.
• Health over 7 days shows every hour of the week as a square, the share of checks without a problem, and which checks failed.
• Checkout speed draws the slow line at 1.3 times the median and marks the test purchases above it.

3.3

• Tested with WooCommerce 11.2.
• Fix: the payment methods health check string now uses ordered placeholders, so translations can reorder the count and the names.
• Readme: a short list of what the plugin checks, and answers for common checkout problems.

3.2

• New: on MageSentinel's Free plan the connection card says the connector is inactive and that the checkout is still checked once a day, instead of asking whether the monitor is paused.
• Readme: documents the hourly plan check.

3.1

• New: when the free monthly test purchase does not pass, the result offers to email you the next time it happens.
• Changed: links to magesentinel.com from the plugin carry a plain campaign tag (utm_source=wporg), so MageSentinel can tell that a signup came from the plugin. No data about your site is added to them.
• Readme: the health page list now mentions the DNS check added in 2.9.

2.10

• Changed: the button that runs MageSentinel's test purchase is now called "Test cart & checkout", so it is not mistaken for "Check again", which re-runs the health checks on this site.

2.9

• New: "DNS on this server" health check. It times a lookup at each nameserver in /etc/resolv.conf and warns when the first one does not answer, which makes every outgoing call from the site (payments, couriers, updates) wait seconds first.

2.8

• Improved: during a test purchase, "Where the time went" now moves while a step is running. The current step counts up live from the moment MageSentinel started it, instead of the bar waiting for the step to finish.

2.7

• New: dark colours. The plugin screens follow your system's light or dark setting, and a small switch in the header lets each user pin Light or Dark instead. The dashboard widget stays light.

2.6

• New: after two weeks, and only while every check is healthy, the overview asks once for a review on WordPress.org. "Later" hides it for 30 days, "No, thanks" for good.

2.5

• New: Revenue this week vs last week, day by day.
• New: Selling, but out of stock: products that sold in the last 30 days and have none (or almost none) left, with an estimate of the sales missed this month.
• New: Health over 7 days: the worst result of each day's health checks.
• New: Checkout speed: how long a test purchase takes from start to the last click before paying. Your free monthly tests without an account, the last 30 checks with MageSentinel connected.

2.4

• New: a free test purchase once a month, without an account. MageSentinel goes through your checkout from outside like a shopper, up to the last click before paying, and shows each step as it happens.
• New: "Test purchase now" in the dashboard widget for connected stores.

2.3

• Translations now use WordPress's standard system, so the plugin can be translated on translate.wordpress.org. Greek is bundled.

2.2

• The weekly summary email is now opt-in, and loads nothing from outside when opened.
• All markup the admin screens build is escaped before it is printed.
• The readme describes the external service in one place, including the test purchase requested after an update.
• Deleting the plugin removes its settings and stored data.

2.1

• Tools → Site Health shows a "WooCommerce checkout health" test: critical when something stops orders, recommended when something is worth a look.
• wp magesentinel status prints every check from the command line, and exits 1 when one is red.

1.10

• The HTTPS self-check now verifies the certificate.
• The readme lists the external services the plugin talks to.
• Plugin Check clean: inputs are unslashed and sanitized, the error-log reader uses SplFileObject, and the name now reads "Checkout Monitoring for WooCommerce".

1.9

• Connected stores: MageSentinel now receives the updates applied in the last week (name and version), to mark them on the store's charts next to the checks.

1.8

• The plugin is now listed as "MageSentinel — WooCommerce Checkout Monitoring". Same slug, settings and features.

1.7

• New: checks that http:// sends shoppers on to https:// and shows which security headers the storefront sends (HSTS, nosniff, frame protection, referrer policy).

1.6

• Connected stores: when WooCommerce, the theme or a payment or shipping plugin is updated, MageSentinel runs a test purchase two minutes later instead of waiting for the next scheduled check. At most one every 15 minutes.
• The update email links to the overview with every check.

1.5

• MageSentinel now sees whether WooCommerce would actually offer each enabled payment method, and whether checkout and cart are built with the WooCommerce blocks or the classic shortcode. When a check finds no payment method at checkout, the alert names the one WooCommerce itself refuses to offer.

1.4

• The self-check runs every 15 minutes instead of every hour, so a broken checkout, a payment method switched off or a site left in maintenance is emailed within a quarter of an hour. The expensive parts keep their 12-hour cache, so the extra runs cost the site little.

1.3

• Settings: "Settings saved" shows only after saving, not on every visit.

1.2

• New check: the SSL certificate, with a warning two weeks before it expires.
• New check: products in stock without a price, which nobody can add to the cart.
• Payments by method over 7 days: paid, failed, unpaid and success rate.
• Checkout over 7 days: shoppers who reached checkout and how many paid. Counts only.
• Stores not connected see the steps MageSentinel's hourly test purchase goes through.

1.1

• The weekly summary is a designed email: tiles with the change against the week before, a chart of orders per day, the health checks and the updates.
• Versions now run 1.1 to 1.10, then 2.1.

0.13

• Failed payments: three in an hour trigger the check at once, and a payment method that only fails while the others take money is named.
• New check: a payment method left in test or sandbox mode on the live store.
• Updates of WooCommerce, the theme and the plugins behind checkout, payment and shipping are recorded; you get one email asking for a test order.
• Weekly summary email every Monday: orders, revenue, average order and failed payments against the week before, plus what needs a look.

0.12

• Test purchase: the progress shows each checkout step by name, with a tick, a cross or a skip and how long it took, the same flow as the MageSentinel app.

0.11

• Test purchase: the button stays readable while it runs, and the progress bar is labelled.

0.10

• Connected stores: "Test purchase now" asks MageSentinel to run a real test purchase and shows it step by step, with the verdict and a link to the run.

0.9

• The Save button is always shown; it saves the alert address and the token.

0.8

• Fix: settings switches failed to save ("Could not save").

0.7

• Settings: switches save as soon as you flip them; the Save button appears only when you edit the alert address or paste a token.

0.6

• Alerts on the overview are a single on/off switch with a link to their settings.
• Background tasks: WooCommerce's own housekeeping (such as fetching block patterns) no longer counts as a failure; a real failed task is named.
• Recent setting changes name the plugin that was switched on or off.

0.5

• "Check again" now runs the checks on the spot (and sends the alert email if something turned red), instead of only reloading the page.

0.4

• Free email alerts: the health checks run every hour and email you when one turns red, and again when it is fixed. Any address, or off.
• New check: orders stopped coming in, for stores with a steady flow.
• Connected to MageSentinel, the plugin shows "Monitored by MageSentinel" and pauses its own emails; they resume if MageSentinel stops checking in.
• Links to try MageSentinel or see its plans, shown only while not connected.

0.3.0

• Optional CAPTCHA exemption for MageSentinel's own checks, off by default: requests carrying this store's connector token skip CAPTCHA 4WP, reCAPTCHA for WooCommerce, hCaptcha for WP and Simple Cloudflare Turnstile. Pages served that way are never cached.

0.2.0

• Admin overview: cart and checkout pages, payment methods, shipping zones, fatal errors, Action Scheduler and pending WooCommerce database updates, each linking to the screen that fixes it.
• Table view of every figure on the overview, so nothing lives in the chart alone.
• Activity panel: MageSentinel's last contact and its recent test orders.
• Diagnostics now report catalog size, pending updates, cache state and configuration changes.
• Greek admin strings.

0.1.0

• First release: diagnostics, order confirmation and test-order cancellation over /wp-json/magesentinel/v1/, guarded by a hashed token.