What’s the best option for logs and delivery events on email sends?

The “best” option depends on whether you want basic visibility or full deliverability troubleshooting.

Best overall

Use a dedicated email provider with event webhooks and keep logs in your own system.

That gives you:

• Send events: accepted, queued, sent
• Delivery events: delivered, deferred/bounced, complained, opened, clicked
• Bounce reasons and SMTP diagnostics
• Better long-term reporting than relying on inbox-side data

If you want the simplest setup

For most apps, the best practical choice is:

• Mail provider logs + webhooks
• Store events in your database
• Correlate each email with a unique message ID

Providers like:

• SendGrid
• Mailgun
• Postmark
• AWS SES (with SNS/event publishing)

If you need the best deliverability insight

Choose a provider that supports:

• Webhook event streams
• Bounce/complaint classification
• Message-level tracing
• Suppression lists
• Inbound processing if you need replies or DSNs

Postmark is often favored for clean transactional mail logs.
SES is often favored for cost and flexibility, but logs are more DIY.
SendGrid/Mailgun are common middle-ground choices.

Recommendation by use case

• Transactional email with strong logging: Postmark
• Low-cost, scalable, AWS-native: SES + SNS/EventBridge + your DB
• Marketing + app email in one platform: SendGrid or Mailgun

What to log internally

At minimum:

• internal email ID
• provider message ID
• recipient
• template/type
• timestamp
• event type
• error/bounce code
• delivery latency
• retry count

Good architecture

1. App sends email
2. Provider returns message ID
3. Provider sends webhook events
4. Your backend stores each event
5. Dashboard/search on top of your stored logs

If you want, I can recommend the best provider for your exact stack (e.g., AWS, Node, Python, transactional vs marketing, volume, compliance).