Log Emails

Description

Log emails to the WordPress database for later analysis. Access is restricted to administrators, and emails with WordPress passwords are obfuscated for security / privacy. Useful for diagnosing lost email problems.

Use this plugin with Disable Emails to divert all WordPress emails into logs, especially handy for developers.

Logs are automatically purged after a defined period, set through a settings page in the WordPress admin. Setting the period to 0 prevents logs from being purged. Uninstalling the plugin purges all logs.

Translations

Many thanks to the generous efforts of our translators:

• Czech (cs-CZ) — Rudolf Klusal
• English (en_CA) — the English (Canadian) translation team
• English (en_GB) — the English (British) translation team
• French (fr-FR) — Hugo Catellier
• Korean (ko_KR) — the Korean translation team

If you’d like to help out by translating this plugin, please sign up for an account and dig in.

Installation

1. Upload this plugin to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory.
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.

FAQ

Standard WordPress emails are logged, but some others are not

You probably have a plugin that is sending emails via some other method, like directly using the PHP mail() function, or directly implementing an SMTP client. Not much I can do about that…

Why are some HTML emails broken?

Some plugins tell WordPress that their emails are HTML, using one of two accepted methods. These emails are correctly recorded as HTML and should display reasonably well in the logs. If they use CSS, they might not display exactly like they do in an email program, but should still display OK.

Some plugins just dump HTML into emails without saying it’s HTML, or even following basic HTML document rules. If those emails have an alternative body, implying HTML + plain text parts, they’ll be marked as HTML and will display as such.

If you find that emails from some plugins are broken, please tell me in the support forum.

What performance impact does it have?

Logging emails writes to the database. The plugin uses a custom post type, so logging each email has the same impact as saving a new WordPress post, i.e. generally not much.

Reviews

Faith restored!

Anonymous User 652281 July 2, 2021

Thank you so much. At last a simple, lightweight plugin that works! No upselling or additional frameworks. And it adds itself discretely and sensibly in the WP menu system.

Really great plugin!

Boat October 16, 2020

Great feature for free, why not to get another 5 stars Thanks!

Simple is good

rvnd September 30, 2020

no premium features, just great community spirit. thanks dev.

compact and free from vulnerabilities

tazotodua December 14, 2018

I’ve checked it’s functionality and with first sight, it didn’t contained vulnerable parts. Thank you.

Only sad I didn’t find this plugin sooner!

John Hawkins October 6, 2018

Seriously, this plugin is so freakin’ helpful. I work on a lot of sites that I have set up on my local development machine and don’t have outgoing email set up on purpose. Only rarely do I need access to test those emails. But when I need it, it’s typically urgent. This plugin has completely saved the day multiple times over the past month. Thank you so much for the great work!

Simple and useful plugin

Max K April 26, 2017

Thanks for a plguin, it was thoroughly coded and seems have all that I need.

Contributors & Developers

Changelog

The full changelog can be found on GitHub. Recent entries:

1.5.0

Released 2024-07-28

• changed: requires PHP 7.4 minimum (recommend PHP 8.2+)
• fixed: viewing an email log triggered warnings in PHP 8.1+
• added: Settings, Logs links to Plugins page listing