Email Tracking Laravel Package

Product Decisions This Supports

• Email deliverability and engagement instrumentation: The package hooks into Laravel's MessageSent event to log outbound email, track opens/clicks via webhooks, and surface analytics — useful when deciding whether to build in-house email tracking or adopt a package.
• Build vs. buy: If your roadmap includes transactional email observability (open rates, click-through, bounce handling), this package is a candidate to buy/adopt rather than build. v7's 139 tests, ~92.8% coverage, PHPStan Level 4, and CI matrix across PHP 8.2–8.4 / Laravel 11–12 materially de-risk the "adopt" decision.
• Feature/roadmap: email type classification (new in v7.0.0): Classifying emails as transactional, marketing, notifications, etc. (via BackedEnum or string types) unlocks segmented analytics, per-category filtering, and category-aware compliance/reporting. This supports roadmap items like "separate transactional vs. marketing metrics" or "suppression rules by email category."
• Platform upgrade planning: The v7.0.0 breaking changes (PHP 8.2+ required, Laravel 11+ required) are a forcing function for teams on Laravel 9/10 or PHP 8.1. This informs engineering's framework upgrade backlog and hosting/provider decisions.
• Use cases: transactional email auditing, customer notification tracking, marketing campaign measurement within a Laravel app, compliance-adjacent logging of outbound communications, and support/debugging workflows ("did the user receive the email?").

When to Consider This Package

Consider adopting when:

• You run a Laravel 11 or 12 application on PHP 8.2+ (or are already planning that upgrade).
• You need outbound email tracking (sent/open/click) without building event listeners, webhook ingestion, storage, and analytics from scratch.
• You want email type classification for segmented reporting — v7.0.0's enum/string support is a clean fit for BackedEnum-based domain models.
• You value a maintained package with a real test suite (139 tests, ~92.8% coverage), static analysis, and CI across PHP/Laravel matrices — a reasonable proxy for long-term maintenance risk.
• Your team is comfortable with the Laravel 11 event registration pattern (Event::listen in AppServiceProvider::boot()), which v7 requires and documents.

Look elsewhere or defer when:

• You are pinned to Laravel 9/10 or PHP 8.1 for hosting, legacy dependency, or vendor constraints — v7 drops these entirely, and staying on v6.x means accepting an unsupported branch. Evaluate the upgrade cost first.
• You need enterprise-grade deliverability tooling (ESP-integrated bounce/complaint handling, DMARC/SPF guidance, ISP feedback loops). A package-level tracker complements, but does not replace, a dedicated ESP or deliverability vendor.
• You require strict data-privacy guarantees around open/click tracking (GDPR/ePrivacy pixel consent). Confirm tracking-pixel consent handling is in scope for your legal review.
• You are a non-Laravel PHP stack — the package is Laravel-coupled (events, migrations, middleware).

How to Pitch It (Stakeholders)

For executives: A widely-used, actively maintained Laravel package for tracking outbound email just shipped a major, security-driven release. It drops end-of-life platforms (Laravel 9/10, PHP 8.1) and adds email-type classification for segmented analytics, alongside a substantially strengthened quality bar: 139 automated tests, ~93% coverage, static analysis, and CI across modern PHP/Laravel versions. The strategic ask is small: confirm our Laravel/PHP baseline is on 11+/8.2+ and, if so, adopt v7 to gain better email observability at low maintenance risk. If we're still on Laravel 10, this is a useful trigger to schedule that upgrade — Laravel 10 is EOL and carries known security exposure.

For engineering: v7.0.0 is a breaking release: PHP 8.2–8.4 only, Laravel 11–12 only, with event registration moving to the Laravel 11 Event::listen pattern in AppServiceProvider::boot(). Migration is documented step-by-step. In exchange we get email type classification (BackedEnum or string), Pest 3 / PHPUnit 11 testing, PHPStan Level 4, strict types, Pint formatting, and a CI matrix spanning PHP 8.2–8.4 × Laravel 11–12 on Ubuntu and Windows. Recommended plan: verify environment, upgrade Laravel first if needed, bump henryavila/email-tracking to ^7.0, update event registration, run the suite. The upgrade guide covers each step.

For product: The new email-type classification directly supports segmented reporting — separating transactional from marketing and notification email metrics — which enables cleaner dashboards and category-specific rules. No new product surface is required from us beyond configuration and, if desired, defining an EmailType enum.