Title: Stop Emails Author: Sal Ferrarello Published: August 20, 2013 Last modified: January 13, 2026 --- Search plugins ![](https://ps.w.org/stop-emails/assets/banner-772x250.png?rev=758931) ![](https://ps.w.org/stop-emails/assets/icon-256x256.png?rev=980422) # Stop Emails By [Sal Ferrarello](https://profiles.wordpress.org/salcode/) [Download](https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/stop-emails.1.2.1.zip) * [Details](https://pirate.wordpress.org/plugins/stop-emails/#description) * [Reviews](https://pirate.wordpress.org/plugins/stop-emails/#reviews) * [Installation](https://pirate.wordpress.org/plugins/stop-emails/#installation) * [Development](https://pirate.wordpress.org/plugins/stop-emails/#developers) [Support](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/stop-emails/) ## Description Stops outgoing emails sent from WordPress. This plugin stops outgoing emails generated by WordPress core, plugins, and themes. Emails sent using the `wp_mail()` function, will not be sent. In the case where an author does not use the recommended `wp_mail()` function and instead sends the email using another mechanism, an email will still be sent. This plugin allows you to suspend sending emails when doing development work. Any calls to `wp_mail()` will fail silently. WordPress will operate as if the email were sent successfully but no email will actually be sent. On the admin menu page Settings > Stop Emails, there is the option to log all emails to the PHP error log. By default this logging is disabled. NOTE: If using the PHP `mail()` function directly, this plugin will NOT stop the emails. Built by [Sal Ferrarello](http://salferrarello.com/) / [@salcode](http://twitter.com/salcode) ## Screenshots * [[ * When the plugin is running, there will be a warning on the backend of the website. * [[ * Lies! The email wasn’t really sent, we’re running Stop Emails ## Installation 1. Install plugin from WordPress plugin repository https://wordpress.org/plugins/ 2. Activate Stop Emails through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress. #### Manual Installation 1. Upload the entire `stop-emails` directory to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory. 2. Activate Stop Emails through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress. #### mu-plugin Installation 1. If the directory `wp-content/mu-plugins/` does not exist, create it. 2. Upload the single file `stop-emails.php` to the `wp-content/mu-plugins/` directory ## FAQ ### Where do the emails go? The emails are lost forever. ### Why are some of my emails still being sent? Most likely, this is due to a plugin you have running. There are two different things the plugin could be doing to cause emails to still be sent. 1. The plugin is overriding our overriding of the sending mechanism. 2. The plugin is calling the PHP function `mail()` directly. Unfortunately in either of these cases, this plugin will not be able to stop the email. ### Known Incompatible Plugins? A list of Known Incompatible Plugins is available at [https://github.com/salcode/stop-emails/wiki/Known-Incompatible-Plugins](https://github.com/salcode/stop-emails/wiki/Known-Incompatible-Plugins). ### I want to log the emails that are stopped You can enable logging of stopped emails on the admin menu page Settings > Stop Emails. Emails will be logged to your PHP error log. ### Why would I want install in the mu-plugins directory? Activating a plugin normally requires logging into the site. Installing the file in the mu-plugins directory allows you to activate the plugin without logging in. This can be helpful when setting up an existing site locally. ### Where can I report a bug? Please report bugs at https://github.com/salcode/stop-emails/issues ## Reviews ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/48f10230fc423269bebc9650d7d9d6804b59c11c5a3da1b3ebcdf9909bcf83d4? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[Easy and Effective](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/easy-and-effective-262/)󠁿 [JRyven](https://profiles.wordpress.org/jryven/) May 29, 2022 Excellent plugin! Easy, effective, bloatless. ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/e08bc04ae7b9493dd20a23c125cff788a51e1aed00dd67cd5b3ae2a5486d1978? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[Great plugin from a great developer](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/great-plugin-from-a-great-developer-2/)󠁿 [darkpollo](https://profiles.wordpress.org/darkpollo/) June 3, 2018 Not much more to say. It is great and it works! ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/16732a2e037b13d0025585edf8d956bedca4fd2eeb455a91cd64cdbb70630a7f? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[Fantastic Plug in](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/fantastic-plug-in-40/)󠁿 [nick5798](https://profiles.wordpress.org/nick5798/) November 9, 2017 1 reply Great plugin. nice and simple and works ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/db4ddb5d199b12bc5126ff03ccc43b3974d458d3cbdc9b08efaaf5f557dd8d59? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[Great Plugin](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/great-plugin-14646/)󠁿 [NicheLabs](https://profiles.wordpress.org/allennichelabs/) August 4, 2017 1 reply I develop a lot of WordPress sites and normally this isn’t an issue. But I’ve been developing a membership site and normally when I do a site that includes users and their email addresses I just click on the box that asks to send the user notification of their password. But on this particular site the users need to be approved. I’m using BuddyPress and a plugin that allows user moderation, BP Registration. The problem came in when when I had to start approving members so they would show up in the list. These were existing members so they needed to be active. I started getting emails asking what the heck was going on. Each of my members were getting notices that they had been approved. I had to take the time to explain to each one of them what had happened. Very time consuming, very embarrassing. Glad I found this since I have several members that still need to be added. I added myself as a user and checked the box to notify me of my password. No email! I changed my password. No email! I approved my account. Still no email! Works perfectly. I can now develop in silence and not worry about alerting/confusing members. Thank you for your work! Allen ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/6e229b77c35eff460257711220922038ed5f8551600366c661745c5806865171? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[Great turn-key solution](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/great-turn-key-solution-2/)󠁿 [LewisCowles](https://profiles.wordpress.org/lewiscowles/) December 20, 2016 1 reply Worked out of the box for me on a VPS; we were developing a system in parallel to an existing site and someone else installed this instead of using our existing process. I learned of a new plugin and a new way of doing things for WP. Very impressed. ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/1fe0862ea4dd920bfa928e8633440e218c4e45fdb8dd75cfcdfeed11c282b3dc? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[Works Great!](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/works-great-3240/)󠁿 [Anita C](https://profiles.wordpress.org/mymothersdaughter/) October 24, 2016 This works great. I had used it months ago for something else. But I needed to migrate a Ning.com website with members into a new Buddypress site. I had to make sure the members were not emailed or pinged. This plugin stopped all outgoing emails to all the members. [ Read all 12 reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/stop-emails/reviews/) ## Contributors & Developers “Stop Emails” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin. Contributors * [ Sal Ferrarello ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/salcode/) “Stop Emails” has been translated into 6 locales. Thank you to [the translators](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/stop-emails/contributors) for their contributions. [Translate “Stop Emails” into your language.](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/stop-emails) ### Interested in development? [Browse the code](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/stop-emails/), check out the [SVN repository](https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/stop-emails/), or subscribe to the [development log](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/stop-emails/) by [RSS](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/stop-emails/?limit=100&mode=stop_on_copy&format=rss). ## Changelog #### 1.2.1 * Conditionally modify how our fake PHPMailer extends the real PHPMailer class based on changes in PHPMailer introduced in WordPress core 5.5. This eliminates the message “PHP Deprecated: class-phpmailer.php is deprecated since version 5.5.0!” in the error logs. #### 1.2.0 * Add filter to force BuddyPress to use wp_mail() rather than its own BP_PHPMailer class #### 1.1.0 * Add Italian translation (it_IT), thanks to Andrea Gherardi https://twitter.com/ ilghera_TP #### 1.0.1 * No changes to code functionality * “Tested Up To:” version bump to 4.2 * Update to readme.txt to more clearly communicate plugin functionality * Version bump to 1.0.1 #### 0.8.0 * Overhaul of plugin includes: fixing issue with plugin not stopping emails, moving to a class structure, changing email stopping behavior to use the same technique as WordPress core tests, improved inline documentation, addtion of phpunit tests. Introduces a breaking change with https://github.com/salcode/stop-emails-logger #### 0.7.1 * Added check for supporting files before loading them. Since the primary functionality is in stop-emails.php, adding this check allows stop-emails.php to be used in the mu-plugins/ directory (previously, it would throw warnings) #### 0.7.0 * Added filter fe_stop_emails_log to allow other logging of blocked emails #### 0.6.2 * “Tested Up To:” version bump to 4.0 * Add plugin icons #### 0.6.1 * “Tested Up To:” version bump to 3.9 * Add Settings link to plugin page #### 0.6.0 * Add admin settings page with option to enable logging of stopped emails to PHP error log #### 0.5.0 * Correct breaking change #### 0.4.0 * Add Spanish translation (es_ES), thanks to Andrew Kurtis from webhostinghub.com #### 0.3.0 * Added support for localization #### 0.2.0 * Added filter `fe_stop_emails_log_email` for $log_email value, which allows a programmer to add code to log the blocked emails in the php_error.log * Renamed functions and classes to follow WordPress standards #### 0.1.0 * First release ## Meta * Version **1.2.1** * Last updated **3 months ago** * Active installations **5,000+** * WordPress version ** 3.6 or higher ** * Tested up to **6.9.4** * Languages * [Chinese (Taiwan)](https://tw.wordpress.org/plugins/stop-emails/), [English (Canada)](https://en-ca.wordpress.org/plugins/stop-emails/), [English (UK)](https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/stop-emails/), [English (US)](https://wordpress.org/plugins/stop-emails/), [Norwegian (Bokmål)](https://nb.wordpress.org/plugins/stop-emails/), [Spanish (Chile)](https://cl.wordpress.org/plugins/stop-emails/), and [Spanish (Spain)](https://es.wordpress.org/plugins/stop-emails/). * [Translate into your language](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/stop-emails) * Tags * [development](https://pirate.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/development/)[email](https://pirate.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/email/) * [Advanced View](https://pirate.wordpress.org/plugins/stop-emails/advanced/) ## Ratings 5 out of 5 stars. * [ 12 5-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/stop-emails/reviews/?filter=5) * [ 0 4-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/stop-emails/reviews/?filter=4) * [ 0 3-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/stop-emails/reviews/?filter=3) * [ 0 2-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/stop-emails/reviews/?filter=2) * [ 0 1-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/stop-emails/reviews/?filter=1) [Your review](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/stop-emails/reviews/#new-post) [See all reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/stop-emails/reviews/) ## Contributors * [ Sal Ferrarello ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/salcode/) ## Support Got something to say? Need help? [View support forum](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/stop-emails/)