Is Kit (ConvertKit) Tracking Your Email? How to Block It

If you subscribe to a newsletter, online course, or creator update sent through Kit or ConvertKit email tracking, your opens are being logged whether you know it or not. The platform embeds an invisible pixel hosted at open.convertkit-mail.com in every email it sends. The moment Gmail renders the message, that pixel fires, your IP address and approximate location are recorded, and the sender's dashboard updates with a new open event tied to your subscriber profile. This guide explains exactly what gets collected, how the tracking domains work, and the fastest way to stop it.

Key Takeaways

• Kit embeds an invisible 1x1 tracking pixel at open.convertkit-mail.com in every email — open tracking is on by default for all broadcasts and sequences.
• Every link in a Kit email is rewritten to route through click.convertkit-mail.com before forwarding you to the destination, recording the click against your subscriber record.
• Each open logs your IP address, city level geolocation derived from that IP, device type, email client, open timestamp, and a cumulative open count per message.
• Kit rebranded from ConvertKit in 2024, but the tracking domains remain unchanged — older convertkit-mail.com infrastructure is still active.
• You can stop both the pixel and the redirect chain with a tracker blocking extension that intercepts requests to Kit's tracking domains before they leave your browser.

Does Kit Track Your Email Opens?

Yes, and it does so by default. Kit is the email platform of choice for independent creators — bloggers, podcasters, YouTubers, course instructors, and newsletter writers. Its broadcast and sequence emails all embed an invisible tracking pixel as part of the standard template rendering. According to Kit's own documentation on email statistics, open and click rates are reported per subscriber by default for every email sent through the platform.

The tracking is invisible. There is no banner, footer notice, or disclosure inside the email telling you it is happening. Senders can technically disable open tracking on individual broadcasts in the campaign settings, but most do not. Open and click data are the primary signals creators use to understand their audience, decide what content to write next, and decide which subscribers to re-engage. From the sender's perspective, this data is essential. From yours, it means every newsletter you open logs your whereabouts.

Kit rebranded from ConvertKit in 2024 to reflect its ambition to become a broader creator operating system beyond email. The underlying tracking infrastructure remained unchanged. If you subscribed to a newsletter before 2024, the emails from that creator were using the same pixel and link redirect system now running under the Kit name.

What Exactly Does Kit Log When You Open?

The open tracking mechanism is a 1x1 transparent image embedded in the HTML body of the email. The image source points to open.convertkit-mail.com with a unique identifier for the email and the subscriber encoded in the URL path. When Gmail downloads the image to render the message, it sends an HTTP request to that domain containing:

• Your IP address, from which Kit derives your approximate city and country
• Your email client and operating system (from the User-Agent header)
• Your device type — desktop, mobile, or tablet
• The exact timestamp of the open
• The unique subscriber ID associated with your email address

Click tracking uses a parallel domain: click.convertkit-mail.com. Before sending, Kit replaces every link in the email with a redirect URL on that domain. The redirect URL encodes the email identifier, a unique link identifier, and the original destination in base64. When you click, Kit's server logs which link was clicked, which email it appeared in, which subscriber clicked it, and when — then forwards you to the original URL. The forward is near instant, but the click event is fully recorded before you ever arrive at your destination.

Over time, these signals aggregate into a detailed subscriber profile. The sender sees your open history across every email they have sent you, your click patterns per link, your primary device type, and an inferred location. Kit also supports UTM parameter injection, meaning that clicks from your email can be tied to your session on the sender's website, connecting inbox behavior to website behavior in a single analytics view.

For a broader look at how these tracking mechanisms reveal more than most recipients realize, see our guide on how to tell if your email is being tracked.

How to Tell If an Email Came From Kit or ConvertKit

Kit's tracking infrastructure is identifiable by its domains. In Gmail on desktop, open the email, click the three dot menu, and select "Show original." In the raw HTML, search for image tags containing open.convertkit-mail.com — that is the tracking pixel. Search the href attributes of anchor tags for click.convertkit-mail.com — those are the redirect links. Either domain in the source confirms a Kit or ConvertKit send.

The sending infrastructure itself can also identify Kit emails. Kit sends through its own mail servers, so the Received headers and the Message-ID domain will reference Kit's infrastructure. If the From address is the creator's own domain (a common setup), you cannot rely on the From field alone — check the body source for the tracking domains.

Compare this to platforms like Mailchimp, which uses list-manage.com for redirects, or ActiveCampaign, which uses links.activecampaign.com. The technical approach is identical across all major email marketing platforms — only the domain names differ.

How to Block Kit and ConvertKit Tracking in Gmail

The most effective defense is a browser extension that intercepts tracking requests before they reach Kit's servers. Gblock operates inside Gmail and blocks requests to open.convertkit-mail.com and click.convertkit-mail.com automatically — along with hundreds of other email tracking domains. The pixel never fires, the redirect never runs, and your open and click data never reach the sender's dashboard. The blocklist updates continuously as tracking services change or add domains, so protection stays current without any manual maintenance on your part.

Other options are available. Ugly Email and PixelBlock are free Gmail extensions that flag or suppress tracking pixels; they cover open tracking well but typically do not rewrite redirect links, so your clicks can still be logged even if your opens are masked. Trocker works across browsers and handles a wide range of tracking providers. For recipients willing to move away from Gmail entirely, Proton Mail strips trackers server side before messages reach your inbox — effective but requires leaving the Gmail ecosystem. HEY takes a similar approach with an explicit "mark tracked emails" workflow that keeps them separated from your main view.

You can also disable automatic image loading in Gmail (Settings → General → Images → "Ask before displaying external images"), which prevents any pixel from firing but renders all email images broken by default — a significant usability tradeoff. For a full comparison of every available approach and how they handle both pixel tracking and link tracking, see our guide on how to block email tracking in Gmail.

A note on unsubscribing: clicking an unsubscribe link in a Kit email goes through the same click.convertkit-mail.com redirect, confirming that your email address is active and recording the click before you reach the unsubscribe page. If you want to unsubscribe without revealing that you opened and read the email, you need to have the redirect stripped first. Blocking at the extension level handles this automatically.

Sources: Kit help: understanding your email statistics; Beng Tan: what is in email tracking links and pixels; Kit privacy policy.