Email logs

Email logs answer the question people actually ask: did that message arrive, and if not, why not?

Every message is one row. Open it and you get its whole history — accepted, delivered, opened, clicked, bounced — in the order it happened.

A message collects events as it travels, and the row shows the latest one as its status.

• Delivered — the receiving server accepted it. This is the good outcome.
• Bounced — the receiving server refused it. The reason is recorded with the event, and it is usually either a wrong address or a reputation problem.
• Failed or Rejected — the message never got out. Something stopped it before delivery.
• Open and Click — the recipient opened the message or followed a link in it. Treat these as weak signals: an image blocker hides an open, and a spam filter that follows links can invent a click.
• Complaint — the recipient marked it as spam. Rare, and worth taking seriously; see Deliverability.

You can filter by recipient, sender, subject, domain, direction, tag, and date range. Opening a message also shows its content and any links that were clicked.

Logs record what happened. They do not change anything, so nothing here can make things worse.

There is nothing to set up — logging is on. This is how to use it.

1. Go to Email Logs.
2. Filter by recipient if somebody tells you they did not get a message. That is the fastest route to an answer.
3. If you cannot find the message at all, widen the date range, then check the sender and the domain. A message that was never sent leaves no row.
4. Open the row. The history tells you where it stopped.
5. If it bounced, read the reason recorded against the bounce. It comes from the receiving server, in their words.
6. If it was delivered but the recipient insists it never arrived, ask them to check their spam folder — the log shows the receiving server accepted it, and what happens after that is on their side.

There is no row for the message. It was never accepted for sending. Check the sending application and the credentials it uses under Senders and SMTP credentials.

Delivered, but the recipient says otherwise. Their server took it. It is in a spam folder, a rule filed it, or a filter in front of their mailbox held it. The bounce reason field is empty because there was no bounce.

Bounced with "user unknown". The address does not exist. Check spelling before anything else.

Bounced with a reputation or spam message. That is not about this one message. Open Deliverability and check the authentication for the sending domain.

Opens look impossibly low. Many mail clients block tracking images by default. Use opens as a trend, never as a count.

• Deliverability — patterns across all your mail
• Senders and SMTP credentials — how mail gets sent in the first place
• Go to Email Logs