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In this guide, you will learn how to check email logs on the WordPress website, including the date and time using the WP Mail SMTP plugin. But first, learn the basics of how important is Email Logs for your WordPress website.
Email logs allow you to analyze and track the emails sent to users by your WordPress website, which will improve monitoring and checking the status of email notifications sent by your WordPress website.
WordPress automatically sends certain email notifications to your users whether you’re running a small business website or a WooCommerce store. On the other hand, these emails will include password reset emails, new user notifications, password change notifications, comments, and WordPress update notifications on a typical WordPress website.
Emails are more relevant for an E-Commerce business because they deliver receipts, order details, new order notifications, order processing, and user account-related emails to customers regularly. All of this means that emails are key for your website to perform effectively and provide the best user experience; just make sure they are in their Inbox and not in the Spam folder.
To ensure email deliverability, you can use an SMTP service to implement email logs on your WordPress website. You may also want to observe which emails are sent and to whom, so you can keep track of your email activities.
But first, you need to set up an email logs service on your WordPress website, to do this In this guide I will use the WP Mail SMTP plugin created by WPForms. This WP Mail SMTP plugin fixes your email deliverability by reconfiguring WordPress to use a proper SMTP provider when sending emails.
This plugin also helps you to check email logs on the WordPress website. Email logs help store emails for your records, audit outgoing emails, and debug during site development. First, you need to install WP Mail SMTP by WPForms plugin on your WordPress website, or you can see our more detailed guide on how to install WordPress plugins in WordPress.
Before you deep dive into setup Email logs in the WordPress website with the WP Mail SMTP plugin, make sure that you have WP Mail SMTP Pro or later plan to enable Email logging on your WordPress website. WP Mail SMTP plugin is available for free to download but Email Logs require its Pro plan, you can download the free version of the WP Mail SMTP plugin from the WordPress plugins repository.
If you don’t have a WP Mail SMTP Pro plan, don’t worry I have a big bonus for you, at WPRiddle our readers can get instant $50 off on any WP Mail SMTP plans, to get your big discount, go to the WP Mail SMTP website and click the Get WP Mail SMTP Now button to get started, now select your best budget plan and click GET STARTED button and make a purchase complete by entering payment and your details, then click Complete Checkout button, there’s you don’t need an extra coupon code to get discount because our discounted link automatically apply $50 discount during checkout.
Before you start the WP Mail SMTP plugin installation make sure you have a WP Mail SMTP Pro or later downloaded file and License Key to get every step done easily. To get your WP Mail SMTP Pro or later file, first, log in to your WP Mail SMTP account and click on the download menu to open the download page. On the right-hand side, you will see the Download WP Mail SMTP button, click on it and start the download process, and save it in the safe place on your computer because you will need this file during installation. On the same page you will see your WP Mail SMTP plugin license key, just copy the license key and save it in the text file, you need this key to get automatic updates and activate the license of your WP Mail SMTP Pro or later plan.
Now you need to log in to your WordPress website admin panel. Once you’re in the admin panel click on the Plugins menu from the left side of your WordPress admin panel, then click on Add New button. Instead of search plugins, you need to upload a WP Mail SMTP plugin to your WordPress website to enable Email Logs, to do this, click Upload Plugin and click Choose File button and locate the WP Mail SMTP download file from your computer, and then click Install Now button to begin the plugin installation. Once plugin installation is complete, then click on Activate button. If you’re redirecting to the WP Mail SMTP setup Wizard, please click on Go back to the Dashboard from the bottom to verify your license key, but you can activate the WP Mail SMTP license during the setup wizard.
Once you are in the WP Mail SMTP General tab, you need to paste your WP Mail SMTP Pro license key here which I have already told you to save in the safest place. Just copy the license key and paste it here and click the Verify button to activate the license and start getting automatic updates free of cost.
Now you’re ready to set up your WP Mail SMTP plugin, just click the Launch Setup Wizard button to get started, Just click the Let’s Get Started button.
On the next screen, you will see an SMTP Mailer list where you can choose from different mailer services, including SMTP.com, Sendinblue, Mailgun, SendGrid, Gmail, Outlook, Amazon SES, Zoho, and other SMTP. In this guide, I will choose “SMTP.com” for now and click Save and Continue button. But you can choose any of the given mailers from the list, don’t worry there’s also a guide on each mailer provider. (Note: I will be adding a guide on other mailer services soon.)
In the next step, you will see “Configure Mailer Setting.” This step might look different than other mailer providers but you can get guidance on how to configure it on each mailer provider.
In this step you need a SMTP.com account to get an API Key, if you already have a SMTP.com account then you log in directly from here or create a new account from here. Once you have logged in or created a new account on SMTP.com, you’re ready to find your API Keys. Just find the API keys in your SMTP.com account and paste them into the API Key field.
Now you need to fill in the Sender Name, it is a value specific to each SMTP.com account. To find your Sender Name, you can open your Senders page within your SMTP.com account. Go there and copy this value into the Setup Wizard.
In the From Name field, you can put any name here but if you don’t fill this then it will use your site name by default, so make sure that you have entered the correct details in this field before you continue to the next steps. You can also choose to enable the Force From Name option to apply this name to all emails site-wide.
Now in From Email field, you need to put your email address so that all of your site’s emails will appear to be sent. For SMTP.com services to be able to work properly, this email address must be for your domain like yourname@example.com.
Just make sure you have to enable the option labeled Force From Email. This will save you the trouble of editing the From Email settings throughout your site (in all settings where email could be sent from) and ensure that all of your site’s emails are authenticated. Now click the Save and Continue button.
In the next step, you need to set “Which email features do you want to enable?” By default, the Improved Email Deliverability and Email Error Tracking settings will be enabled, but you can optionally choose to enable email logs at this step as well. Here you will notice you require a WP Mail SMTP Pro plan to enable Email Logs on your WordPress website, I already told you at the beginning of this guide, you can get the WP Mail SMTP Pro plan directly from their WP Mail SMTP Official website, also remember you will get a $50 off on any plans.
Once you purchase a WP Mail SMTP Pro or later plan you can now enable the Email Logs, just click the circle and enable it, and click the Save and Continue button.
In the next step, you will see “Help Improve WP Mail SMTP + Smart Recommendations” but this step is optional, you can skip this step. On the next screen, you need to insert your license key to unlock automatic plugin updates. If you have your license key on hand, you can paste it into this field and click the Verify License Key button to automatically activate your license.
WP Mail SMTP will automatically send a test email after you’ve set up your license key to ensure that your configuration is correct. If everything goes well, you’ll get a screen that says, “Congrats, you’ve successfully set up WP Mail SMTP!” Simply click the Finish Setup button to finish your setup.
If there are any mistakes during the test, you’ll see a message that says “Whoops, looks like things aren’t configured properly.” Click the Start Troubleshooting option to read any error messages and be sure to follow the recommended troubleshooting procedures.
After you have successfully done the WP Mail SMTP plugin installation, now I will continue this guide on how to check email logs on the WordPress website including the date and time using the WP Mail SMTP plugin.
Now click on WP Mail SMTP > Settings from the left side of the WordPress admin panel, and then select the Email Log tab. Here you need to click on Enable Log to keep every email record that is sent from your website. This option will keep log information like Email Status, Date and Time Sent, Subject Line, Recipient Email Address or Addresses including CC and BCC, From Email, Number of Attachments, Mailer Options Used, and Additional Technical Details. See the image below:
The Log Email Content option will store all of the content of the emails sent from your site. You’ll be able to find it in the email record along with the other details. This is optional, you don’t need to enable this, if you enable Log Email Content then it stores all email content as plain text in your website database without encrypting it, so it’s up to you. As per my recommendation, I want you to disable the Log Email Content option. Now click the Save Settings button.
Once you sent emails from your WordPress website you can check Email Logs from WP Mail SMTP > Email Log. Here you can find every detailed email log from the emails that you’ve sent to users to view more details click the Subject and see all logs for that individual log.
That’s it, I hoped this guide will help on how to check email logs on the WordPress website using the WP Mail SMTP plugin.
