Mailbird Email Tracking: Is Mailbird Tracking You?

Mailbird email tracking is real, and it works on you even if you have never installed Mailbird. The desktop client for Windows and Mac lets paying users hide a tracking pixel in the mail they send. When you open that message in Gmail, the sender gets a notification with your name and the time. Mailbird's own email tracking page sells this as a feature: "No receipt for the recipient to decline. There's no prompt to refuse." The same company also blocks other people's pixels in its inbox, which makes Mailbird one of the stranger cases in our email client series.

Key Takeaways

• Mailbird Premium includes unlimited email tracking, the discontinued Standard license allowed 5 tracked emails a month, and Mailbird Free includes none.
• Mailbird's help center says a tracked email reports who opened it and when, and its Mailbird Next documentation says recipient location is not tracked.
• Mailbird Next's Privacy Mode blocks remote images and, in the same click, "Activates Email Tracking for your sent emails."
• Mailbird Next blocks incoming tracking pixels by default through a "Block sender pixel tracking" toggle, according to a help article dated May 15, 2026.
• Mailbird's privacy policy was last updated on May 25, 2018 and still cites the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, which the EU Court of Justice struck down on July 16, 2020.

Does Mailbird Track Your Emails?

Yes, if the person emailing you pays for it and switches it on. Mailbird's help article Email Tracking in Mailbird sets the limits by license: Mailbird Free "Does not include Email Tracking," Mailbird Standard allows "Up to 5 tracked emails per month," and Mailbird Premium gets "Unlimited tracked emails per month." The Standard license is no longer sold, so new users who want tracking buy Premium.

The feature is older than it looks. The help article was first published on May 13, 2020, and it still describes the classic Windows app. Senders click an "Email Tracking" button next to Send, or tick "Enable Email Tracking by Default" under Settings, then Composing. In Mailbird Next, the newer app for Mac and Windows, the switch is called "Track sent emails" and lives in the Privacy Hub. Neither help article says tracking ships switched on; both describe it as a choice the sender makes.

Mailbird is not alone in the email client series. Spark's Read Statuses and Superhuman's read status do the same job, as do Newton Mail read receipts, while Edison Mail offers no sender tracking at all. By contrast, eM Client refuses to add pixel tracking, citing GDPR.

What Does a Mailbird Sender See When You Open Their Email?

A Mailbird sender sees whether you opened the message and when. According to the classic help article, "The only information tracked is: Who opened the email. When it was opened." That data shows up in four places:

• The email list: hovering over a sent message shows how many recipients have opened it and how many have not.
• A detail popup: recipient names with timestamps for when each one opened the email.
• A notification center in the top right corner listing recently tracked emails.
• Windows tray notifications that pop up as opens come in.

Mailbird Next swaps these for checkmarks: "Two grey checkmarks – Email not opened. One blue checkmark – Some recipients opened it. Two blue checkmarks – All recipients opened it." Its tracking article lists "Recipient location" under "Information not tracked." That is a narrower report than Superhuman's, which also shows the device you used.

Mailbird is candid about the flaws. If you disable remote images, "email tracking won't work." If you read on Apple Mail with Privacy Protection, "Mailbird may show a false positive (i.e., the email is marked as opened when it hasn't been)." And for mail sent from a Microsoft Exchange account to several people at once, the open shows as "unknown."

How Does Mailbird's Tracking Work Under the Hood?

Mailbird tracks opens with an invisible image. Its marketing page explains the method plainly: "When the recipient's client loads images, it requests that pixel from a server, and the request itself signals an open." The client "manages the pixel (and the reporting) for you, records opens against the original message, and shows the result inside your inbox." Because the pixel travels inside the message, it "works the same across Gmail, Outlook.com, Microsoft 365, and other accounts connected over IMAP/SMTP."

The Exchange limitation is a clue to the design. If Mailbird can name each opener on Gmail or IMAP accounts but not on a single Exchange message to several people, the pixel is most likely unique per recipient, which would mean each recipient gets a separate copy. That is our inference; Mailbird does not describe it.

Mailbird also does not publish the hostname its pixel loads from, and we did not send a tracked email to capture one. What we found is a lead, not proof:

• Public certificate transparency logs list a host called tracking-v2.getmailbird.com, with the earliest certificate we found dated June 24, 2024 and a renewal as recent as August 13, 2026.
• It resolves to Cloudflare, as does tracking.getmailbird.com. The domain has no wildcard record: a nonsense subdomain we tested returned NXDOMAIN, so both names were set up on purpose.
• Every path we requested on both hosts, including a made up control path, returned an empty 404. We could not confirm either one serves Mailbird's pixel.

One claim needs a closer look. The Next Privacy Hub says "Mailbird cannot store, share, or access tracking information." But a pixel only works if some server logs the request when your mail app fetches it. Mailbird's documentation never says who runs that server or how the open reaches the sender's app. The promise may hold, but nothing public shows how.

The Privacy Mode Paradox

Mailbird Next has a one click Privacy Mode, and it tracks other people. The Privacy Hub article says that when enabled, Privacy Mode "Blocks Remote Images," "Activates the Block Senders feature," and "Activates Email Tracking for your sent emails." A Mailbird user who clicks the privacy button to protect themselves may start planting pixels in every email they send.

Most coverage treats read tracking and tracker blocking as opposite camps. Mailbird ships both behind one privacy label, which shows how the industry thinks about it: your privacy means nobody watches you, and watching others is a productivity tool. Mailbird's own 2025 blog post on how email trackers exploit Gmail's image loading runs to thousands of words on how pixels expose Gmail users. It does not mention that Mailbird sells one.

Does Mailbird Block Trackers in Your Inbox?

Mailbird Next does, by default. Its help article How Mailbird protects you from email pixel trackers, published May 15, 2026, says "The protection is on by default for every account, in every folder." It sorts images using "size, hidden styling, URL shape, recognised sender patterns, and file type," shows a target ring icon with a count of blocked trackers, and blocks every remote image in the Spam folder no matter what your settings say.

Three limits stand out:

• No proxy. Unlike Apple and Proton, Mailbird describes no image proxy. Our reading is that images it judges real load straight from your computer, IP address included.
• No link cleaning. We found no Mailbird page on tracked links, the redirects that log what you click. Our guide to blocking click tracking in Gmail explains why that half matters.
• Synced allow lists. Your settings and allowed senders "sync with your Mailbird Next account," so that list lives with Mailbird, not only on your machine.

The classic Windows app is cruder. It offers one checkbox, Always show remote images, plus "Display once" and "Always display from [sender]" buttons in each message. Undoing a sender approval there means opening a hidden Debug Window and running a database query, "UPDATE Contacts SET IsWhiteListedForImages = 'false'," according to Mailbird's own instructions.

What Data Does Mailbird Collect About You?

Mailbird's privacy policy names Mailbird, Inc. of Sacramento, California as the data controller, and it is badly out of date. It says "This document was last updated on May 25, 2018." It still discusses Flash cookies and still commits Mailbird to the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, which the Court of Justice of the European Union declared invalid on July 16, 2020. Within that policy:

• Analytics: "We use for example Google Analytics, Mixpanel or Hotjar," and "We currently do not respond to 'do not track' signals."
• Profiling: Mailbird may offer "a custom promotional offer based on your email information and behavior inside our Services." You can object by contacting the company.
• Retention: personal data is kept "for 36 months after you stopped using our Services."
• Google data: use of Google API data "will adhere to Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements."

Mailbird Next adds an optional toggle to "share anonymized performance and usage data," which Mailbird says "Does not allow Mailbird to read or analyze email content." One odd detail: Next changes its User Agent to imitate a mobile device for sidebar apps, so Google security alerts show a Huawei phone called "VOG-L27" on your account. Mailbird says it is harmless, but it trains users to ignore the exact alert that flags a real intrusion.

On ownership, we found no sign that Mailbird has been sold. Wikipedia credits Danish cofounders Michael Olsen and Michael Bodekaer with the first version in January 2012, and dates the first public Mac release to October 14, 2024.

What This Means for Gmail Users

If a Mailbird user emails your Gmail address with tracking on, Gmail's image proxy protects less than you might hope. Google's image help page says "Senders can't use image loading to get information about your computer or location," then admits: "Sometimes, senders may know whether you've opened an email that has an image." The proxy hides your IP address. It does not hide the open, and the open is all Mailbird reports.

So the sender still sees your name and a timestamp. Open a pitch at 11:48 p.m. and they know you read it before bed. Our explainer on how Gmail read receipts work covers the mechanics.

The reverse case matters too. If you read Gmail inside Mailbird Next, its pixel blocking covers you there. If you read Gmail in Chrome on the same laptop, none of it applies, because desktop app settings cannot touch Gmail in a browser tab.

Mailbird vs Gmail, Apple Mail, Proton, HEY and Gblock

Each option stops some tracking. None covers every device:

• Mailbird Next: blocks likely pixels by default and lets you allow images per email or per sender. Limits: only inside Mailbird, no documented proxy or link cleaning, and the same app sells open tracking to senders.
• Gmail's image proxy: on for everyone and hides your IP address. Limits: by Google's own wording, senders may still learn that you opened the email.
• Apple Mail Privacy Protection: per Apple, it downloads remote content "in the background when you receive a message (instead of when you view it)," which is why Mailbird admits false positives. Limits: Apple's Mail app only. See how Apple Mail fakes email opens.
• Proton Mail: Proton's documentation says it removes known trackers and loads other images "using a proxy with a generic IP address." Limits: you have to move to a Proton address.
• HEY: its spy pixel blocker "blocks these trackers and tells you who's spying on you." Limits: a paid, separate email service.
• Gblock: a browser extension that blocks tracking pixels and strips tracked links inside Gmail on the web, with an automatically updated blocklist. It flags unknown images of 150 bytes or less, and custom filters let you block any host yourself. Limits: desktop browsers only, not the Gmail mobile app or a desktop client like Mailbird, and its built in list has no Mailbird entry yet, so a pixel it has never seen may get through on first open.

For the wider field, see How to Block Email Tracking in Gmail and our guide to stopping tracking in Apple Mail and Outlook.

How to Block Mailbird Email Tracking

Pick the steps that match where you read mail:

• In Gmail on the web: per Google, open Settings, See all settings, Images, choose "Ask before displaying external images," and Save Changes. Mailbird's own help center confirms tracking fails when remote images are off.
• Add a pixel blocker so ordinary images keep loading while trackers do not. If you want to be thorough, add tracking-v2.getmailbird.com and tracking.getmailbird.com as custom filters; Mailbird documents neither as a source of ordinary images.
• If you read mail in Mailbird Next: leave "Block sender pixel tracking" on in Settings, Privacy Hub, or turn on "Block all images" for the strongest setting.
• If you use classic Mailbird on Windows: keep "Always show remote images" unchecked under Settings, Appearance, and use "Display once" rather than approving senders permanently.
• If you send with Mailbird: check "Track sent emails" in the Privacy Hub after turning on Privacy Mode, since Privacy Mode switches tracking on.

The Quick Answer

Mailbird email tracking exists. Premium users can plant a pixel that tells them who opened their email and when, with no prompt for the recipient, and Mailbird Next's Privacy Mode turns it on alongside image blocking. The same app blocks other senders' pixels by default for its own users. If you read Gmail in a browser, Gmail's proxy hides your IP address but not the open, so blocking remote images or the pixel request is what stops a Mailbird read receipt.