Pendulum touches customer email in two different ways. They look similar and they use the same brand settings, but the actual sending is different. This is the article we link to when a merchant says “why does my logo not show up on the order confirmation?”
Emails Shopify sends
Two emails come from Shopify's mail server, not Pendulum's:
- Order confirmation, fired when a checkout completes.
- Draft invoice, fired when you click Send invoice on a draft order in Shopify admin.
Pendulum gives you a redesigned template for each of these. You paste the template into Shopify's notification editor (under Settings > Notifications). Shopify then renders that template using its own Liquid engine and ships the email through its own SMTP. Pendulum is never in the path of the actual send.
What this means in practice:
- The logo at the top of those emails is the one configured in Shopify admin > Settings > Email settings, not the one in Pendulum Brand settings. The two are independent. Most merchants set both to the same image.
- The PDF download button, accent colors, layout, and the optional banking / W-9 buttons do come from Pendulum Brand settings, because those are baked into the template when you copy it.
- If you change anything in Brand settings after pasting, the changes show up on the next email customers receive, with one exception: changes to which docs/tax buttons appear (or whether they appear at all) require you to re-copy and re-paste the template into Shopify. The other brand-driven changes (colors, logo via Shopify settings) take effect live.
Emails Pendulum sends
Payment reminders are different. When an invoice goes past due and your cadence fires (manually or on schedule), Pendulum's server renders the reminder email from your Brand settings + template, then sends it via Postmark.
These emails honor every setting in Brand settings directly: company info toggle, footer text toggle, email signature mark, accent color, logo. No paste-into-Shopify step is needed for reminders because the entire send pipeline is Pendulum's.
Who appears in the From field
By default, Pendulum-sent emails come from invoices@penduluminvoices.com. Replies route to whatever reply-to address you set in Brand settings (so customer answers hit your real inbox, not ours).
On the Pro plan you can verify your own domain and have Pendulum send from invoices@yourdomain.com. See Verified sender for the setup walkthrough.