Who needs a fancy $30/month email app for seeing when someone opened your email when you can just do it yourself?
Simply paste a link in any of your emails, and you'll get notified by push notification when someone opens it.
I'm using an IFTTT endpoint for push notifications, but this works with any webhook endpoint. If you choose to deploy with IFTTT, create a new "applet" with the mobile app so that you can allow push notifications. The trigger should be a "Webhook", and the service should be "Notifications".
You'll then need a personalized webhook from the IFTTT app. When you visit the Webhook Integration page, click "Documentation", and it'll generate you're webhook. It should look something like:
https://maker.ifttt.com/trigger/YOUR_SERVICE_NAME/json/with/key/YOUR_KEY
I'm deploying to a simple Fly.io host, using the fly.toml file that's in the repo.
Set the environment variable for WEBHOOK when you're ready.
Then create a new Fly.io application with:
flyctl launch
flyctl secrets set WEBHOOK=https://maker.ifttt.com/trigger/YOUR_SERVICE_NAME/json/with/key/YOUR_KEYOnce you have this deployed behind a public address, simply use the /p path and a few params. For example, you could do this:
https://some-dns.com/p?email=yourFriend@gmail.com&subject=LastEmail
I'm requiring both email and subject to avoid bot scraping spam but feel free to change it around.
When the WEBHOOK environment variable is set, you can run make link to generate the link to embed in your email.