Open and click tracking, honestly

What the numbers actually mean: which opens are real, why clicks are the signal worth trusting, and the suppression rules that protect your sender reputation.

Email tracking gets overstated everywhere, so this page tells you exactly what each number means and where it stops meaning anything.

Opens: confirmed vs proxied

Opens are tracked with a 1x1 pixel, and the pixel has a known flaw: Gmail and Apple Mail pre-fetch images through their own servers, firing it whether or not a human looked. HoldFast splits opens accordingly. Confirmed means signals consistent with a real person. Proxied means a pre-fetch fired it and a human may or may not have read the message. We show you the split rather than a flattering total.

Clicks: the signal worth trusting

A click is a person choosing to view your content, and it hands off to the far richer story on the other side: once they land on the reel or link, Insights takes over with watch behavior. When opens and clicks disagree, believe the clicks.

Unsubscribes and suppression

Every email carries a one-click unsubscribe, and it is always honored. Contacts who unsubscribe, or hard-bounce twice, are automatically suppressed: they show a warning when added to a send, and the send is held for them. This is not red tape; it is what keeps your domain's reputation clean enough that the emails you do send keep arriving.

What this adds up to

Treat opens as weather, clicks as intent, and watch time as truth. HoldFast reports all three in those terms, and the wording on every surface is written to survive the honest case, not the hopeful one.