Email Log

What it helps you do

Answer "did the site send it?" when a client says a form notification, an order email or a password reset never arrived. Every email the site sends is listed, with whether it went out and, if it failed, why.

Where to find it

Dirigible → Email log in the WordPress admin. Administrators and Managers can see it. Editors and other roles can't, because the log shows email addresses.

What the list shows

• Date, To and Subject of each email, newest first. +2 more after an address means the email also went to Cc or Bcc addresses.
• Status:
  • Sent: the site handed the email to the mail server or service, and it was accepted. That isn't proof it reached the inbox: if it seems lost, check the recipient's spam folder, then the mail service's own logs.
  • Failed: the email didn't leave the site. The reason shows under the status.
  • Queued: a mail plugin saved it to send a little later (Easy WP SMTP's Optimized email sending). When the plugin sends it, that send gets its own Sent or Failed line.
  • Not sent: a plugin stopped it on purpose. For example, two-step login holds back repeated login-code emails.
  • Unknown: the page that was sending it stopped before it finished, for example because of a server error or timeout.
• Sent through: how it left the site. That's either PHP mail (the web server), SMTP with the server's address, or a mail service such as Mailgun or SendGrid set up in an SMTP plugin.
• Sent by: which plugin sent it (such as gravityforms for form notifications), or WordPress for password resets and account emails.

Use Failed at the top to see only the emails that didn't go out. Search finds emails by address or subject.

Seeing why an email failed

Click an email's subject to open it. For a failed email you'll see:

• Error: WordPress's message, such as "Could not authenticate" or "Could not connect to SMTP host".
• Server reply: what the mail server answered, with its code. 535 means the SMTP username or password was wrong. 550 or 554 means the server refused the address or the sender.
• How it was sent: the mail plugin, the SMTP server and port, the encryption, whether it logs in, and the From and Return-Path addresses.
• What the SMTP server said: the server's side of the conversation, line by line. What the site sent, including the SMTP login, is never kept.

For a sent email you'll also see the Message ID, and the Server queue ID when the server gives one. When Easy WP SMTP sends through Mailgun, the Message ID is Mailgun's own. Search for either in your mail service's logs (Mailgun, SendGrid, your host) to follow the email from there.

What's kept, and for how long

• Emails stay in the log for 30 days, then they're removed automatically. A very busy site keeps its newest 10,000 emails.
• The log keeps addresses and subjects, never the message itself or its attachments (only how many there were). Password-reset links and login codes are in the message, so they're never stored. SMTP usernames, passwords, API keys and login tokens are never stored either, even when a mail server repeats them back in an error.
• Logging starts with the first email the site sends after the theme update. Nothing to set up.
• A mail-logging plugin such as WP Mail Logging can stay on: it keeps its own log, and both list the same emails.

Related

• Tools & Maintenance → Send test email sends a test message right now and shows how the site sends mail.