1. Did the email arrive?
Open the order in the Alva admin and check the Email log on the Downloads tab. A row marked Sent or Delivered means Postmark accepted and delivered the message — ask your customer to search every folder (including spam and Promotions) for the sender shown in Settings → Email. A row marked InactiveRecipient, Bounced, or no row at all means the email never reached them. Branch out to the email diagnosis article below.
Alva admin order detail page showing the Email log section on the Downloads tab. Highlight one row with status Delivered and one row with status InactiveRecipient. No real customer data visible. Browser chrome cropped out.
If the email never landed, jump to Why your customer didn't receive their download email and stop here.
2. Is the download link still valid?
Every Alva download link carries an expiry timestamp and, for sold links, a visit cap. On the order's Downloads tab the link row shows Expires, Downloads used, and Visits used. An expired link or a row that reads 3 / 3 downloads means the customer hit the wall — not a bug. Resend a fresh link or extend the limit. The deep links below cover both paths.
Resend or copy the URL via Find a customer's download link. Adjust the policy in Set download expiry and per-customer download limits.
3. Is the file actually mapped to the product?
If the order's Downloads tab shows No downloads or is missing a file the customer expected, the product was never mapped — Alva had nothing to deliver. This is the single most common silent failure on a fresh install. Open the Shopify product, scroll to the Alva Digital Downloads block, and confirm the file (or pack, link, or license-key tag) is attached. Variants need their own mapping.
Walk the mapping flow in Attach a file to a product, then resend the email.
4. Did fraud hold the order?
Alva Digital Downloads holds the delivery email and license-key assignment until the fraud check resolves. On the order, look for a Fraud queue panel: a status of Pending, Held, or Manual review means nothing has been sent to the customer. POS orders skip fraud entirely, so this branch only applies to online orders. Approve from the Fraud queue page to release the email and any keys; reject if it's confirmed fraud.
Alva admin order detail page showing the Fraud queue panel with a Pending status badge and the Approve / Reject buttons visible. Highlight the status badge. No real customer data visible. Browser chrome cropped out.
Clear the hold via Approve or reject a flagged order from the fraud queue. For the why behind the wait, see How fraud checks work and when downloads are held.
5. Did download limits or IP rules block them?
If the customer reports a "limit reached" or "access denied" page, the per-customer download limit, IP cap, or device limit fired. The Download log on the order shows every attempt with IP and timestamp — a cluster of recent denies confirms it. This is most often a customer using both a phone and a laptop, or a VPN that rotated their IP. Reset the counter and the link works again immediately.
Clear the block via Reset download limits for a customer.
Still stuck after all five branches?
If none of the branches matched, the issue is almost certainly customer-side: a corporate email gateway stripped the link, a browser extension blocked the redirect, or the file opened but the customer expected a different format. Send a test order to your own email to verify the end-to-end flow is intact, then loop back to the customer with the working link.
See also
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Last updated 2026-05-06