Iâve been using Canary Mail though Setapp, which has this feature, and it does the job well. Only gripe is that it when you send an email to multiple people, it canât track which specific person has/has not read the email.
Can any of the tracking companies do that? It seems like youâd need to send several separate emails, each with a different tracking pixel, to accomplish that.
See my screenshot above, that shows tracking multiple recipients. So, itâs possible and some apps have this feature. No idea how itâs implemented.
Nothing personal at all and I understand why some individuals/companies desire to track email opens and reads but as an individual I take my privacy seriously. This is just one of many reasons why I abandoned social media years ago.
I applaud Apple for its new privacy features. I have enabled all such features on all of my devices. I donât click on links nor load outside content in my emails unless the sender is a vendor Iâm currently working with, is from a family member and Iâve confirmed the email came from a family member, or is from a colleague.
I use DDG for all Internet searches and usually have private browsing on and I run with VPN on (in addition to private relay) most of the time. I use ad blockers.
Nothing is foolproof but I do the best I can.
Again, I want to emphasize that I understand the business case for trackingâI just donât want to be one that is tracked. 
A thought about this subject; Even if you can see that an email is opened, you donâ know that itâs actually read. Eg, some emails I reviece I just go through them to get the Unread status out of the way.
Iâm curious about the procedure; Do you take for granted that the receiver have actually read the content, and if not, what happens?
You probably know this, but I just wanted to give you a heads up that people usually donât do what you assume them to do.
Exactly. You cannot know they actually read it.
I worked 18 years for a company that used a service to track its marketing emails. The company(s) we used pointed out the limitations of email tracking. It relies on read receipts (which most clients donât send by default) and on tracking pixels and/or trackable links.
So if their email client doesnât load remote images you wonât even know that they opened it unless they click on a link in the message. But the average user doesnât know or care about tracking so the information you receive, while always incomplete, is valuable for measuring the effectiveness of your campaign.
Yes, to me thatâs the one shortcoming of Canary that Polymail somehow overcomes. I know who it is every time a recipient âreadsâ my email, and I know who it is every time a recipient clicks on a link or an attachment in the message.
Through some kind of voodoo, Polymail does that.
Thanks, and sure, I totally get that. But Iâve lost clients in the past who claimed they never received emails containing deliverables by the deadline. So Iâve become hypervigilant about making sure that never happens again. If I receive a tracking notification that the message has been âopenedâ by my intended recipient(s) (even more useful when a number of people are collaborating on something), thatâs a weight off my mind, because at least I know they got it. If I donât receive the notification, or if itâs âopenedâ but I donât receive some kind of follow-up, then I take further action. Should it be âopenedâ but they claim they never received it (yet to happen, thankfully), I at least can tell them that according to my email service, the message was opened by Jane Doe at 10:53 a.m. yesterday. They hopefully wouldnât argue âWell, yes, I opened it, but I didnât read it, so thatâs your problem.â I suppose thatâs possible, but if so, I have a rather different issue to address.
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Thanks! Iâve used Canary in the past and I do like it, but it doesnât tell you which recipient opened the message. You just get a generic notification, which isnât granular enough for me.
I appreciate the tip!
Thank you for the tip!
Sounds like you are 100% aware of the possible issues. 
Iâm curious how you handle this though. I have for long been looking for a âFollowup solutionâ. Ie, if I donât get an answer within X days, I need to followup on that client.
Actually, I asked the community about this a while ago: Boomerang for Apple Mail?
I want the âAlways follow up on emails after no responseâ function.
Both Mailbutler and SaneBox are not good enough though.
Maybe you have a better solution?
Iâve heard about this being a feature of SaneBox, and itâs piqued my curiosity - but never tried it. What about the feature do you find lacking?
I donât know if itâs better than other options, but in SH after I press send I can press the âhâ key and type when I want it returned to inbox. So, âh 5 daysâ sets it so that if thereâs no reply, it returns to the Inbox in 5 days.
@Rob_Polding I saw in this thread that youâve moved to Outlook.
Are you using any plugins for tracking, and if so, how well do they work?
Iâm not, but I know that the Mailbutler plugin works with Outlook (my colleagues use it) for tracking.
Iâve changed jobs and as a result, email tracking isnât a necessity anymore.
Email is not a guaranteed service! There is nothing in the various IETB RFCs that say it is or commit it to being such. Messages can get stuck because network routes go down â you are likely to know that as most mail daemons will bounce stuck messages back after some period has elapsed (typically 28 days).
You could set read receipts on the message but there are users â and I am one â who deliberately will not honour such receipts to be returned. And the last time I checked Apple Mail does not respond to them either.
Back when I ran Linux and hosted my own mailer I had procmail recipes that expunged Delivery- and Read-Receipt lines from message headers and further squelched them by setting my pine options to No for both things.
Some people try to get around this reassosnable desire for privacy by including a 1x1 gif in the message but various mailers (and receipients) are wise to that and block the downloading of such nefarious things.
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I use MailTrackerBlocker for a while now, and it is taking care of those trackers very nicely as a PlugIn with Apple Mail.