The email log
The email log is the record of every email a site has sent: confirmations, your own alerts, reminders, review requests and campaigns. When a customer says "I never got it", this is the screen that settles whether it left. There are two of them, one per site and one for the whole account.
Where it is
Emails sent in the sidebar, under the site's settings group, opens the per-site log, headed Emails sent (this site). The account-wide one is under your avatar, Settings > Emails sent (all sites); it has a Project column and keeps the emails of sites you have since deleted. Both are visible to the account owner only; team members and the read-only demo do not see them.
What each row tells you
| Column | What it means |
|---|---|
| Event | What triggered it: order received (the customer's confirmation), order placed (that one is yours), lead captured, booking reminder, low stock alert, campaign and so on. |
| Recipient | The address it went to. Rows to your own address are your alerts. |
| Subject | The subject line as sent. |
| Status | Sent, Queued or Failed. |
| Sent | When it left, as "12m ago" or a date. |
Click a row for its details. For emails with a stored body, View Email shows exactly what the recipient received, which is the quickest way to answer "what did we tell them?".
Search matches the address, the subject and the event, so typing a customer's email shows every message they were ever sent. Filters narrow by status and date, and Export downloads the current view as a CSV.
Reading the status
Queued means it is waiting to go. Mail leaves on a schedule rather than instantly, so a queued row a minute old is normal. One that has been queued for an hour is not; see Emails aren't sending.
Sent means the mail provider accepted it. That is not the same as the recipient seeing it: the receiving server can still file it as spam or, rarely, drop it. If the log says Sent and the customer has nothing, the problem is delivery at their end, and the fixes are in Email deliverability, starting with checking the spam folder.
Failed means it was refused and the reason is on the row's details. The usual ones are a
mistyped address, such as the exmaple.com in the screenshot, a sending domain that is not verified
yet, and SMTP details that have stopped working. Correct the cause; the email is not resent on its
own, so for a confirmation that mattered, resend from the order or booking.
If a row is missing entirely
No row means the email was never generated, which is a different problem from one that failed:
- the module is off, or the thing that triggers it did not happen (an order that was never placed, a booking still pending);
- the customer left no address, or the notify address is blank;
- for campaigns, the send has not reached that contact yet or the contact is unsubscribed.
Understanding notifications lists what triggers each email and where its address is set.
Good to know
- Campaign and automation sends are here too, one row per recipient, so the per-recipient question is answered in the same place as the per-order one.
- The account-wide log survives a deleted site. If you remove a project, its emails stay readable under Settings.
- Customers can ask what you hold about them. The log is part of that; Customer data requests covers the rest.
Next steps
Frequently asked questions
Does "Sent" mean they got it?
It means our side handed it over successfully. The receiving server decides the rest, which is usually fine and occasionally means the spam folder.
How long should something stay Queued?
A minute or two. Mail is sent on a short schedule. Anything queued for an hour is worth reporting.
Can I resend a failed email from the log?
Not from the log. Fix the cause, then resend from the record: the order's status email, the booking's confirmation, or the campaign.
Can I see the email itself?
When the body was stored, yes: open the row and press View Email. Transactional emails are stored; campaign rows link to the campaign.
Why can my team member not see the log?
The log holds customer addresses for every email the site ever sent, so it is owner-only on purpose.
Is there an export?
Yes, Export downloads the current filtered view as a CSV.
Related reading
- Email deliverability for a small business - what to change once the log shows the message did go out.