How to Setup WordPress Email Logs (and WooCommerce Email Logs)

Keeping WordPress email logs can help you quickly identify delivery problems and confirm that important messages are being sent successfully.

Over the years, we’ve tested numerous email solutions and found that WP Mail SMTP is the most reliable option for improving email deliverability in WordPress.

It connects your site to trusted email providers like Gmail and Amazon SES, making it much more dependable than WordPress’s default mail system.

WP Mail SMTP also includes built-in email logging, allowing you to track emails sent from contact forms, password reset requests, user registrations, and WooCommerce orders.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to set up WordPress email logs using WP Mail SMTP so you can monitor email activity and troubleshoot issues more effectively.

Why Set Up Email Logs in WordPress or WooCommerce?

Email logs let you track every email sent from your WordPress website, making it easier to confirm delivery and troubleshoot problems when they occur.

Your site sends important emails for password resets, contact forms, user registrations, and other automated actions. If you run a WooCommerce store, it also sends order confirmations, receipts, and shipping notifications.

Without email logs, it can be difficult to know whether these messages were sent successfully or failed along the way. This can lead to missed inquiries, frustrated customers, and lost sales.

Here are some of the biggest benefits of setting up email logs:

• Verify email delivery: See whether emails were sent successfully or failed.
• Troubleshoot issues faster: Quickly identify and diagnose email problems.
• Track WooCommerce notifications: Monitor receipts, order confirmations, and shipping emails.
• Monitor plugin activity: Keep track of emails sent by contact forms, membership plugins, and other tools.
• Support your customers: Confirm whether a specific email was sent when responding to support requests.

With that in mind, let’s look at how to set up email logs in WordPress and WooCommerce.

What You’ll Need to Set Up Email Logs

Before we begin, let’s quickly go over what you’ll need to follow this tutorial:

• A Domain Name and Web Hosting: This guide requires a self-hosted WordPress.org website. If you don’t have one set up yet, you can follow our complete guide on how to make a WordPress website.
• WP Mail SMTP Pro: The email logging feature is a premium tool available starting at the Pro tier ($49/year for 1 site). You must have a paid Pro, Elite, Developer, or Agency license to view and manage email logs in your WordPress dashboard.

That being said, let’s see how to easily set up email logs on your WordPress or WooCommerce website.

How to Set Up Email Logs in WordPress & WooCommerce

For this tutorial, we will be using the WP Mail SMTP plugin. It allows you to send WordPress emails using any SMTP service provider, including Gmail, Outlook, SendGrid, Amazon SES, and more.

Several of our partner brands are also using it to send their emails and have reported high deliverability rates. For more information, you can check out our WP Mail SMTP review. 

Why We Recommend WP Mail SMTP Over Free Email Log Plugins

While free plugins like WP Mail Catcher and Email Log can record emails sent from WordPress, they don’t fix the underlying delivery problems.

WP Mail SMTP combines email logging with proper SMTP configuration, which means your emails actually reach the inbox instead of just being logged as “sent” while landing in spam.

Step 1: Install and Set Up WP Mail SMTP

First, you need to install and activate the WP Mail SMTP plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, visit the WP Mail SMTP » Settings page to configure the plugin’s settings.

Here, you will have to enter your license key. You can find this information in your account on the WP Mail SMTP website.

Simply copy and paste your license key and then click on the ‘Verify’ button.

After that, scroll down to the Mailer section and select how you would like to send your WordPress emails.

WP Mail SMTP works with any SMTP service. It has easy configuration options for popular SMTP service providers like SendLayer, SMTP.com, Gmail, Outlook, Brevo, Mailgun, SendGrid, Amazon SES, and other SMTP services.

Clicking on the mailer will show you instructions on how to set it up.

The default option is set to PHP mailer. We don’t recommend using that because it is not reliable.

Since most WordPress hosting servers are not properly configured for emails, choosing this option means that your WordPress emails may never reach users’ inboxes or even spam folders.

We recommend using a provider like SendLayer, SMTP.com, or Brevo. These dedicated SMTP services consistently achieve 99%+ deliverability rates and are used by thousands of WordPress sites to ensure emails reach the inbox instead of spam folders.

This helps your emails avoid spam filters, which is a common problem when using WordPress’s default mail function.

If you choose Other SMTP as your mailer option, then you will need to provide SMTP settings. You can get them from your SMTP service provider’s website

Look for a section labeled ‘SMTP Settings’, ‘Integration’, ‘API Credentials’, or ‘Email Settings’ in your account dashboard. You will need the following information:

• SMTP Host: Your SMTP host address, which usually looks like this: smtp.yoursmtpserver.com
• Encryption: Usually, it is either SSL or TLS
• SMTP Port: Usually, it is 465
• Authentication: Turn on the authentication
• Username: The username provided by your SMTP service. Usually, it is your email address
• Password: The password for your SMTP service

After entering your mailer credentials, don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Settings’ button to store your settings.

Step 2: Enable the Email Log Feature

Now that you have set up mailer settings in the WP Mail SMTP plugin, it is time to turn on the email logging feature.

From the plugin’s settings page, switch to the ‘Email Log’ tab and toggle the ‘Enable log’ switch.

This feature will record helpful information about each email sent from your website, like the date and time, subject line, delivery status, sender and recipient email addresses, headers, and attachments.

WP Mail SMTP also includes a ‘Log Email Content’ option. We recommend leaving this setting disabled unless you’re actively troubleshooting a specific email issue.

When enabled, WP Mail SMTP stores the full content of your emails in the WordPress database. This may include sensitive information such as password reset links, customer details, contact form submissions, and WooCommerce order information.

For online stores and business websites, storing this information can create additional security, privacy, and compliance concerns. Depending on the type of data being stored, it may affect your obligations under regulations such as GDPR or CCPA.

WooCommerce store owners should also be mindful of industry security standards when handling customer information.

If you need to enable ‘Log Email Content’ for troubleshooting, then we recommend turning it off again as soon as you’ve resolved the issue.

Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save settings’ button to save your changes.

Step 3: Testing WP Mail SMTP Setup

Now that you have set up the WP Mail SMTP plugin, let’s test it to make sure that everything is working as expected.

WP Mail SMTP makes this step easy. Just go to the WP Mail SMTP » Tools page and switch to the ‘Email Test’ tab.

From here, simply enter your email address and click on the ‘Send Email’ button.

The plugin will now send a test email to the address you provided. It will then show you the status of the email delivery on the screen.

Step 4: Viewing Your Email Logs in WordPress

WP Mail SMTP logs all emails sent through WordPress’s wp_mail() function, which includes both WordPress core emails (password resets, new user notifications) and WooCommerce transactional emails (order confirmations, receipts, shipping notifications).

You don’t need to configure anything separately for WooCommerce — once email logging is enabled, all WooCommerce emails will appear in the same log.

You can view your WordPress email logs anytime without leaving the WordPress admin area.

How to View Your Email Logs

Simply go to the WP Mail SMTP » Email Log page. You will see the log with a list of entries since you enabled the email log.

To view entry details, take your mouse over it and then click on the ‘View’ link below it.

This will open the email log entry with a detailed view.

Searching and Deleting Log Entries

The email log page includes a search feature that lets you find entries by email address, subject line, or content (if you have content logging enabled).

You can also delete older entries from your email log. 

Warning: Deleting log entries is permanent and cannot be undone. Make sure you have exported or backed up any logs you may need for troubleshooting or compliance before deleting them.

To delete a single entry, hover over it and click the ‘Delete’ link.

To delete multiple entries, select each email, click on the ‘Bulk actions’ dropdown menu, select ‘Delete’, and then click the ‘Apply’ button.

Exporting Logs and Viewing Reports

If you need to analyze your email logs more carefully or create your own deliverability reports, then you can export your logs to your favorite spreadsheet software or email marketing service.

You can also easily resend an email that has failed.

WP Mail SMTP Pro subscribers can also visualize their email deliverability in a chart that shows how many emails were sent, opened, and clicked. The analytics grouped by subject line and displayed in a weekly chart format.

This is super useful for WooCommerce users.

It’s easy to check the engagement of each campaign or newsletter. The logs include open and click counts for each email subject.

Clicking the graph button displays a chart of how the specific email is performing.

Plus, every week, WP Mail SMTP will email you a helpful summary of your email performance statistics.

It looks something like this.

How to Track WooCommerce Email Logs for Orders and Receipts

WooCommerce sends critical transactional emails like order confirmations, shipping notifications, and customer receipts.

With WP Mail SMTP’s email logs, you can verify that every WooCommerce order email was delivered, track which customers opened their receipts, and resend failed order notifications directly from your WordPress dashboard.

This is especially valuable for troubleshooting customer complaints about missing order emails.

Bonus: Start Your Email Marketing Campaign in WordPress

Now that you have ensured that your emails will be delivered to users on time, it is time to launch your email marketing campaigns and build an email list.

This will allow you to send emails for discount offers, cart abandonment, welcome messages, and coupons, bringing back customers to your website and ultimately leading to more conversions.

For this, we recommend Constant Contact. It is a popular email marketing service that comes with premade templates, which makes it super easy to create automated email workflows for your website.

You can even create drip campaigns to send different email notifications to users over time. For details, see our guide on how to set up automated drip notifications in WordPress.

However, if you have an online store, then FunnelKit Automations is the better option for you. It lets you send abandoned cart emails, welcome messages, post-purchase messages, and so much more using its intuitive builder.

Plus, you can use its other tools to create order bumps and sliding carts and manage customers’ data with its CRM.

For more instructions, see our tutorial on how to build an email list in WordPress.

Video Tutorial

If you’re not a fan of written instructions, we also created a video tutorial on how to set up email logs in WordPress:

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Frequently Asked Questions About WordPress Email Logs

Here are some questions that our readers have frequently asked about setting up email logs in WordPress and WooCommerce:

1. Why is my email log empty even after I enabled it?

The log only records emails sent *after* the feature is enabled. If it’s still empty, first try sending a test email from the WP Mail SMTP Tools menu to confirm your mailer is working.

If the test email arrives but isn’t logged, it could be a plugin conflict or a server configuration issue.

2. Does WP Mail SMTP track email opens and clicks for all mailers?

Open and click tracking depends on your chosen mailer service. This feature works best with recommended mailers like SendLayer, SMTP.com, and Brevo, which provide this data to the plugin.

If you are using the ‘Other SMTP’ option with a basic mail server, these tracking features may not be available.

3. Can I set up WordPress email logs for free?

While the base WP Mail SMTP plugin is free, the Email Logging feature itself is part of the Pro version. Some transactional email services (like SendGrid or Mailgun) keep their own logs, but you would have to log into their separate websites to view them.

WP Mail SMTP Pro lets you view logs directly in your WordPress dashboard.

4. Will enabling email logs slow down my WordPress site?

No. WP Mail SMTP’s email logging runs as a lightweight background process that saves data to your WordPress database without impacting page load speed for visitors. The logging feature is designed specifically to avoid performance issues.

5. What’s the difference between WP Mail SMTP and WP Mail Catcher?

WP Mail Catcher is a free plugin that only logs emails sent from WordPress without improving deliverability.

WP Mail SMTP Pro combines email logging with proper SMTP configuration through services like SendLayer or Brevo. This means your emails actually reach the inbox instead of spam folders. WP Mail SMTP also includes open/click tracking and weekly performance reports that WP Mail Catcher doesn’t offer.

We hope this article helped you learn how to set up WordPress email logs and WooCommerce email logs.

You may also want to check out our other WordPress guides to improve email deliverability and email logging:

• Beginner’s Guide to WordPress Email Marketing Automation
• How to Monitor User Activity in WordPress with Security Audit Logs
• How to Setup Email Notifications for WordPress Updates
• Must-Have WordPress Plugins to Grow Your Site
• How to Get a Free Email Domain (5 Quick and Easy Methods)
• How to Resend New User Welcome Emails in WordPress

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