CheckoutWC includes built-in email validation that helps prevent customers from entering invalid email addresses at checkout. This validation verifies that the email domain exists and can receive emails by performing a DNS lookup.
This feature catches common typos like “gmail.con” instead of “gmail.com,” or “yaho.com” instead of “yahoo.com.” It’s one of the ways CheckoutWC helps ensure you can actually reach your customers after they place an order.
When You Might See “Invalid Email” Errors
In rare cases, customers may report seeing an “invalid email” error even when their email address is correct. This can happen with:
- Newer email domains that haven’t fully propagated across DNS servers
- Regional or country-specific email providers with non-standard DNS configurations
- Company email servers hosted on private infrastructure
- Self-hosted email domains with minimal DNS records
If your customers are reporting this issue, the email domain validation is potentially too strict for their particular email provider.
Before You Disable Validation: Contact Support
We’d rather fix the root cause than have you disable this feature.
Email domain validation prevents real problems that can impact your WooCommerce store. Typos in email addresses mean you can’t send order confirmations, shipping updates, or reach customers about issues with their orders. Disabling it entirely removes this protection for all customers.
If you’re seeing false positives (valid emails being rejected), please contact CheckoutWC support with the specific email domains that are being rejected. We can investigate whether:
- There’s a bug in our validation logic
- The domain needs to be added to our whitelist
- There’s a configuration issue we can help resolve
This helps us improve CheckoutWC for everyone, not just your store.
How to Disable Email Domain Validation
If you’ve determined that disabling the validation is the right choice for your store, you can use the cfw_disable_email_domain_validation filter.
Add this code to your theme’s functions.php file, a custom plugin, or via CheckoutWC > Advanced > Scripts > PHP Snippets:
add_filter( 'cfw_disable_email_domain_validation', '__return_true' );This disables only the DNS-based domain validation. CheckoutWC will still validate that the email address is properly formatted (contains an @ symbol, has a domain, etc.).
What This Filter Does
When cfw_disable_email_domain_validation returns true:
- Disabled: DNS lookup to verify the email domain exists
- Still active: Basic email format validation
- Still active: Email domain autocomplete suggestions (gmail.com, yahoo.com, etc.)
Alternative: Adjust Validation Timing
If the issue is that validation triggers too aggressively while customers are still typing, you might prefer to change when validation runs rather than disabling it entirely.
See our guide on How to Change Validation Trigger for Billing Email to make validation run only after the customer finishes typing instead of on every keystroke.
