Mailcheck Now Tracks Clicks (Beta)

Open tracking tells you an email was looked at. It does not tell you what the reader went to look at next. Starting today, mailcheck can tell you that too: which link in your email was clicked, and when. It is in beta, it is off by default, and this article explains exactly what it does, what it stores, and where it stops.

Table of contents

What a click adds that an open does not

An open is a weak signal wearing a strong costume. It tells you the message was rendered somewhere, by someone, possibly by a machine. We have written before about your own rereads and about Apple Mail Privacy Protection, both of which blur the picture.

A click is different in kind, not just in degree. Nobody clicks a link by accident at scale, and a machine that follows links usually follows all of them within the same second, which is easy to recognise. When someone opens your proposal, then clicks the pricing link and not the case study link, you have learned something specific about what they are weighing.

It also changes what you write next. "Following up on my email" is a sentence you send when you know nothing. "I saw you had a look at the pricing page, happy to walk through the annual option" is a sentence you can only send when you do. One of those gets answered.

How it works

When click tracking is on and you send a tracked email, the extension rewrites the links in that message. Each one becomes a short address on go.getmailcheck.com that records the click and immediately forwards the reader to the original destination.

The redirect is a plain 302 and it is never cached, so a second click from the same browser is counted too. If our side fails for any reason, the redirect still happens: the reader always reaches where they were going. That was the first rule we wrote when building it. A measurement feature must never be able to break the thing it measures.

Two filters run before a click is recorded, and they mirror the ones we already use for opens. A click that arrives in the first ten seconds after sending is ignored, because that is an antivirus or a corporate gateway checking your links, not a person. And a click coming from the same network you sent from is treated as your own.

It stays off until you turn it on

Click tracking is off for every account, including ours. Nothing in your emails is rewritten until you go to the tracking dashboard and switch it on yourself. That is a deliberate choice rather than a technical constraint.

Rewriting a link changes what your recipient sees when they hover over it. It replaces a readable address with a short one pointing at a domain they do not recognise. That is a real cost, paid by your reader, and it is not ours to impose on you by default. Some people will find it worth it. Some will not, and they should be able to keep the feature switched off without thinking about it.

The switch is per account, not per email. Turn it on and every email you choose to track from then on gets its links rewritten. Turn it off and the rewriting stops immediately, while the links already sent keep working forever.

What free and paid accounts see

Every account, free included, can turn click tracking on and see the total number of clicks on each email. If your quote was clicked nine times, you will know it was clicked nine times.

The detail, which link was clicked and at what time, is part of the paid plans. We thought about hiding the count as well and decided against it: a number you cannot explain is frustrating, but a number you cannot even see is useless. The count alone is often enough to tell you to pick up the phone.

Nothing is lost while you are on the free plan. Every click is recorded from the moment you switch the feature on, and the full detail unlocks retroactively across your whole history the day you upgrade.

What we store, and what we never see

We store the links you put in your own email, the time each one was clicked, and a short hash of the visitor address, never the address itself. That is the whole list.

We do not read the body of your emails, with or without this feature. The extension takes the links out of the message you are about to send, because it has to rewrite them, and it sends us nothing else. The subject and the recipient were already part of open tracking and are unchanged.

Each stored link stays attached to the account that created it, which means a link can be cut off if it is ever abused. Only http and https addresses are ever served as a redirect. This matters more than it sounds: an open redirect that accepted anything would be a gift to phishing campaigns, and it is the first thing an attacker tests.

The honest limits

This is a beta, and there are three things worth knowing before you rely on it.

Link rewriting arrives with the next extension update. The dashboard switch and the counting are live now. The part that rewrites links as you send ships with the version currently in review at the Chrome Web Store. Turn the switch on today and it will start working the moment your extension updates, without anything else to do.

Some mail clients preload links. Fewer than preload images, but they exist, mostly inside corporate security suites. Our ten second filter catches the obvious cases. A scan that runs twenty minutes after delivery will still look like a click.

A rewritten link is visibly rewritten. Anyone who hovers over it sees our domain. If you write to people who will notice and mind, this feature is not for you, and that is exactly why it is off by default.

Conclusion

Opens tell you a message reached someone. Clicks tell you what they went looking for. Together they turn a follow-up from a polite interruption into a reply to something the reader actually did.

It is in beta because we want to see it run on real emails before calling it finished. If it counts something strange, or if a link behaves oddly, tell us through the contact form. That is what a beta is for.

Frequently asked questions

Does turning this on change my existing emails?

No. Only emails you send after switching it on, and only the ones you choose to track. Everything already in your sent folder is untouched.

Will my links still work if mailcheck is down?

The redirect is the only thing that has to work, and it is the simplest part of the system. Recording a click can fail without stopping it: the code forwards the reader first and counts afterwards.

Does it work in both Gmail and Zoho Mail?

Yes, with the same switch and the same behaviour in both. See open tracking in Zoho Mail if you are new to the Zoho side.

Is a click more reliable than an open?

Generally yes, because there is no equivalent of an image proxy quietly loading every link. It is not perfect, and the section on limits above says where it bends.

Can I use click tracking without open tracking?

Not at the moment. Clicks are attached to a tracked email, so tracking has to be on for that message.

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