Know when WP Mail SMTP stops sending.
Your site can keep taking orders while its emails stop. Operanse watches WP Mail SMTP for refused emails, disabled sending and silence when your site normally sends.
Get alerts by email, Slack, SMS or WhatsApp. When sending stops, Operanse can tell you within about 30 minutes.
Email monitoring is included in Monitor ($39 USD/site/month) and Insight ($99 USD/site/month). Your trial includes 14 days of Insight.
Read-only. No email content collected. Works with WP Mail SMTP Free and Pro.
Operanse sees whether emails are accepted for sending. It cannot see inbox placement, spam folders or later bounces.
Illustrative. One week of email handed to the mailer, drawn against the site’s own normal for each hour. On Friday afternoon sending stops while orders keep coming.
Three ways sending stops
Each looks different from the outside, and each is watched.
Sending is refused
An SMTP password changes, an API key is revoked, a Gmail or Outlook authorisation expires, the provider runs out of credits. WP Mail SMTP refuses each message, and Operanse counts the refusal with a category: authentication refused, server unreachable, provider API refused or failed, address rejected, timed out.
Sending is switched off
“Do Not Send” is useful on staging. Copy staging to live and it comes too: orders go through, nothing is sent, and WP Mail SMTP reports every message as handled.
Operanse counts those as refused: “sending is switched off in the mail plugin”.
Sending goes quiet
Some failures raise no error at all. Once the site’s normal is learned, Operanse notices when sending stops in an hour when the site usually sends.
What you see, and the alert you get
Illustrative example.
reason: the mail API refused the request · wp-mail-smtp
14 of 14 emails handed to the mailer failed in the window (100%). This is the hand-off to the mailer, not delivery to an inbox.
Why
The mail API refused the request (14, wp-mail-smtp).
Next step
Check the mail plugin’s login details and the provider’s status page.
A refusal rate of 50% or more across at least three emails is critical and goes to every channel you choose: email, Slack, SMS or WhatsApp. Silence and smaller jumps in refusals are judged against the site’s own normal, learned in about 48 hours (two weeks for a weekly pattern).
Keep WP Mail SMTP. Add a second pair of eyes.
WP Mail SMTP sends the mail and records errors in wp-admin; Pro adds an email log and failure alerts. Operanse adds silence with no reported error, judged against your site’s normal, and puts mail beside orders, payments, forms and recent changes in one incident. Email monitoring in full
The hand-off, not the inbox. Operanse sees whether WP Mail SMTP accepted each email for sending. It cannot see inbox placement, spam folders or later bounces, and it sends no test messages.
Private, light, and set up in minutes
It never reads your emails. Only counts, the mailer plugin’s name and a short failure category leave the site; never an address, subject, body, header or attachment. Security
It stays out of the way. About 0.02 ms of PHP per page view, no database query, and nothing waits on Operanse. How it’s measured
Create an account at app.operanse.com and add your site.
Install Operanse Agent from wordpress.org and paste the pairing token.
The agent detects WP Mail SMTP and starts counting. Nothing else to configure.
Email monitoring is on Monitor ($39 USD/site/month) and Insight ($99), not on the free Watch plan. The 14-day trial is Insight, no card. Pricing in full
Frequently asked questions
Does it work with my email provider?
It works with any WP Mail SMTP mailer: SendLayer, Brevo, Mailgun, SendGrid, Postmark, Amazon SES, SparkPost, Gmail or Google Workspace, Outlook or Microsoft 365, Zoho and plain SMTP. Free and Pro.
Can it tell whether emails reach the inbox or land in spam?
No. A provider can accept an email that later bounces or goes to spam. Operanse sees acceptance for sending, not what happens afterwards.
What if WP Mail SMTP Pro uses a backup connection?
If the main connection fails but the backup sends the email, Operanse counts it as sent. It does not currently flag the main connection’s failure in that case.
What happens if I send a test email while “Do Not Send” is on?
It is counted as refused. One manual attempt does not meet the critical threshold of at least three emails.
Does Operanse fix or resend failed emails?
No. It is read-only: it watches and tells you. It does not change settings, retry or resend.
Know when sending stops
Keep the mail plugin you use. Add monitoring for refusals, disabled sending and unusual silence.
WP Mail SMTP is a trademark of its owner. Operanse is not affiliated with or endorsed by WP Mail SMTP.