Are you curious about usage tracking in WP Mail SMTP? Usage tracking helps our team to better understand our users and their website needs by looking at a range of variables in their WP Mail STMP plugin, WordPress, and web server.
This information allows us to continuously improve our product as well as our quality assurance testing process. In this article, we’ve shared the details that WP Mail SMTP collects through usage tracking.
WP Mail SMTP
- License Details: For paid license holders of WP Mail SMTP, the license key (and type) lets us locate your customer profile if an issue is detected.
- Plugin Activation Dates: Knowing when a user first started using WP Mail SMTP assists with troubleshooting.
- Email Log and Email Control Settings (Pro users only): Sites of all sizes, ranging from small to very large, enjoy WP Mail SMTP. Stats such as the number of emails sent, delivery status of each email, error logs for failed emails, and similar help us make sure our features and updates get tested in situations that closely match our customers’ site environments.
- Setup Wizard Stats: The WP Mail SMTP Setup Wizard is vital to helping new users set up their SMTP mailer. Knowing when the Setup Wizard was started, whether it was completed, and how long it took allows us to continue to improve the onboarding experience.
- Plugin Settings: As we strive to add features, this allows us to determine which new settings or areas are getting used most frequently (as well as which settings are not used much). Please note that all sensitive settings such as passwords and API keys are automatically excluded from tracking.
WordPress
- Active Theme/Plugins: With over 4 million installs, this information lets us make sure more heavily used themes and plugins are given extra attention during testing and work seamlessly with each update to WP Mail SMTP.
- Locale: We want WP Mail SMTP to be accessible to everyone, and knowing the site’s locale helps us focus our translation efforts.
- Timezone: We have users across the globe, so knowing the densities within various time zones helps us provide the best support coverage possible.
- SSL Enabled: While we believe every site should use an SSL certificate, knowing how many sites haven’t made the jump assists with our testing.
- Multisite: If a site is a multisite network, knowing the sub-site count helps us ensure WP Mail SMTP scales properly for large networks.
- Site URL: The website address allows us to properly store usage tracking records so that we can avoid duplicated details.
Web Server
- PHP and MySQL Versions: These details help us make sure our testing procedures have proper coverage to avoid compatibility issues.
- Server Software: This reports if the web server software is Apache, Nginx, or similar, which is used for testing purposes.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I opt into (or out of) usage tracking?
The answer to this question depends on whether you’re using the paid or free version of WP Mail SMTP.
If you have a paid license with WP Mail SMTP, then you will by default be opted into usage tracking. To disable this, please reach out to support and they will happily help out.
If you’re using WP Mail SMTP Lite and would like to enable usage tracking so that our team can keep making our product better, then please go to WP Mail SMTP » Settings » Misc. On this screen, you’ll need to check the Allow Usage Tracking checkbox.
