TL;DR
Plutio's email log tracks the delivery status of every outgoing email, including invoices, proposals, contracts, and notifications, with eight statuses (sent, delivered, opened, clicked, bounced, failed, send_failed, complained) and full timestamps for each state change.
Plutio stores every outgoing email in Settings under Management, with columns for recipient, subject, status, email type, send method, opened-at timestamp, and error details. Click any entry to preview the original email HTML and resend it in one click if delivery failed. Over 60% of "client never received the invoice" disputes come from emails that bounced or landed in spam, and without a delivery log, the only way to find out is when the payment deadline passes.
Email logs are available on all Plutio plans starting at $19/month, with a 7-day free trial. The log appears in Settings > Management > Email Logs and requires no setup beyond sending emails through Plutio.
What an email log is
An email log is a centralized record of every outgoing email sent from a business platform, tracking each message's delivery journey from the moment it leaves the server through delivery, opens, clicks, bounces, and failures.
In Plutio, the email log lives in Settings under the Management section. Every email that Plutio sends on behalf of the workspace, whether an invoice payment request, a proposal notification, a contract signing link, a scheduler confirmation, or a system notification, creates a log entry with the recipient address, sender address, subject line, email type, send method (Mailgun or custom SMTP via whitelabel), and a status that updates as the email progresses through delivery stages.
Delivery status tracking
Plutio tracks eight distinct email statuses: sent (email left the server), delivered (recipient's mail server accepted it), opened (recipient viewed the email), clicked (recipient clicked a link), bounced (recipient's server rejected it), failed (delivery failed after initial send), send_failed (email never left the server), and complained (recipient marked it as spam). Each status change is recorded in a statusHistory array with a timestamp and optional reason, so the full delivery timeline is visible for every email. Sort the email log by date created or by status to surface problems quickly.
Email preview and one-click resend
Click any email log entry to open a popup showing recipient, sender, status, email type, sent-at timestamp, and opened-at timestamp. The popup also renders the original email HTML in an iframe preview, so the exact message the client received (or should have received) is visible without leaving Plutio. If the email failed or bounced, click the resend button to send the same email again immediately. Plutio creates a new log entry for the resent email with its own delivery tracking. The resend feature turns a failed delivery from a support ticket into a one-click fix, saving 5 to 10 minutes per incident compared to rebuilding and resending the invoice or proposal manually.
A client said they never got my proposal. I checked the email log, saw it bounced because of a typo in their address, fixed it, and resent in 30 seconds. Before Plutio I would have spent 15 minutes recreating the email.
Why email delivery tracking matters for freelancers
Freelancers who send invoices, proposals, and contracts by email have no visibility into whether those critical documents actually reach the client's inbox unless the tool tracks delivery status explicitly. Without a log, the first sign of a delivery problem is silence: no payment, no signature, no response, and no way to tell if the client is ignoring the request or never saw it.
The financial cost adds up. A $3,500 invoice that bounces silently sits unpaid for an extra 7 to 14 days while the freelancer assumes the client is reviewing it. On net-15 terms, that bounce turns a 15-day receivable into a 30-day receivable, and on three projects per month that pattern quietly shifts $10,000+ in cash flow by two weeks. Contract emails that bounce delay project kickoff by the same margin, because the freelancer waits for a signature that the client never received.
FreshBooks shows a basic sent/viewed status on individual invoices but has no centralized email log across all outgoing communications. QuickBooks has no email delivery log at all, so invoice emails that fail produce no notification. Freelancers using either tool discover delivery failures only when a payment is overdue or a client mentions they never received the document.
The most costly delivery failure is not the one that triggers an error, but the one that goes to spam. The email shows as "sent" in every tool, but the client never sees it. Only open tracking reveals the difference between delivered-and-read versus delivered-and-buried.
Plutio's email log catches both scenarios. Bounced emails show a bounced status with the rejection reason. Emails that land in spam but are never opened show as delivered with no openedAt timestamp, which surfaces the problem before the payment deadline passes.
How email logs work in Plutio
Every email Plutio sends automatically creates a log entry in Settings > Management > Email Logs, with delivery status updates tracked in real time as the email progresses from sent to delivered, opened, or failed.
No setup is required. Email logging starts automatically the moment the Plutio workspace sends any email: invoice payment requests, proposal notifications, contract signing links, scheduler confirmations, or system notifications. Workspaces using custom SMTP (whitelabel email) see a banner noting that delivery tracking depends on the custom mail server's webhook configuration.
Step by step
- Step 1: Send an invoice, proposal, contract, or any other email from Plutio. The email log entry is created automatically with status "sent" and a timestamp.
- Step 2: Open Settings in Plutio, navigate to Management, and click Email Logs. The log shows all outgoing emails sorted by date, with columns for subject, recipient, status, email type, send method, opened-at timestamp, and error details.
- Step 3: Filter the log by status to find bounced, failed, or unopened emails. Sort by status to group delivery problems together, or sort by date to see the most recent emails first.
- Step 4: Click any email entry to open the detail popup. The popup displays recipient, sender, status, email type, sent-at time, opened-at time, and any error messages with diagnostic codes (ENOTFOUND, ECONNREFUSED, ETIMEDOUT, EAUTH, and others). An iframe preview renders the original email HTML.
- Step 5: If the email failed or bounced, click the Resend button in the popup to send the same email again. Plutio creates a new log entry for the resent message with fresh delivery tracking.
Practical tip: check the email log 24 hours after sending a batch of invoices. Any entry still showing "sent" without progressing to "delivered" or "opened" likely hit a spam filter or invalid address, and catching it early means the payment reminder goes out before the due date, not after.
Who needs email delivery tracking
Freelancers and agencies sending invoices, proposals, and contracts to clients by email, particularly those billing $2,000+ per project where a single undelivered invoice delays payment by weeks, get the most value from built-in email logs.
A freelance designer sending 8 to 12 invoices per month through Plutio needs to know that each one reached the client's inbox. Without delivery tracking, the designer discovers a bounced invoice only when the payment is 7+ days overdue and the follow-up call reveals the client never received it. With the email log, the bounce shows up within minutes, and the resend goes out the same day. Across a year of invoicing, catching even two bounced emails per quarter saves $5,000 to $10,000 in delayed cash flow.
Agencies with 5+ active clients sending proposals, contracts, and invoices weekly generate 30 to 50 outgoing emails per month through Plutio. At that volume, 2 to 3 delivery failures per month are statistically normal, and each one delays a signature or payment by 5 to 10 business days. The email log turns those invisible failures into a sortable list with one-click resend, so the operations manager catches delivery issues in a daily 2-minute check rather than discovering them when a client says "I never got that."
Freelancers comparing FreshBooks alternatives often ask about email tracking beyond basic sent/viewed indicators. Plutio's email log tracks eight delivery statuses with full timestamp history, error codes, and resend capability across all email types, not just invoices. Dubsado includes email logs inside workflow history for individual projects, but Plutio's centralized log covers every outgoing email in one searchable list regardless of which project, invoice, or proposal triggered it.
Bottom line: any freelancer or agency sending more than 5 client-facing emails per week through Plutio protects cash flow and catches delivery failures early by checking the email log for delivery failures before payment deadlines pass.
