How to Receive Broken Link Reports by Email

What it does

Linkilo's Broken Link Checker scans your site for links that no longer work. With email notifications on, you get a summary whenever a scan finishes (or a daily / weekly digest), so you can fix problems without logging in to check.

Step 1 — Turn the checker on

The checker is off by default in Linkilo 3.0.

1. Go to Linkilo → Settings → Broken Links (under TOOLS in the left navigation)
2. Switch Run the checker to On. This adds Broken Link Checker to the Fix group of the Linkilo menu.
3. Click Save Settings

Step 2 — Set up the email

All Linkilo emails are controlled from one place:

1. Go to Linkilo → Settings → Email Notifications
2. Switch Send notification emails on. This is the master switch — nothing is sent while it's off.
3. In Send to, enter one or more email addresses separated by commas. Leave it blank to use the site admin address.
4. Optionally set a From name and From email
5. Scroll to the Broken Link Checker card and switch Enable for this report on
6. Choose when to send:
   • When a scan finishes — an email after every completed scan
   • Only if issues exceed a threshold — set a Threshold and you'll only hear about it when the number of issues reaches that figure
   • Scheduled digest — Daily or Weekly summary regardless of scans
7. Click Save notification settings

The same page has cards for Orphan Pages, Redirection Manager and the Crawl Log / Server Log Analyzer, so you can get those reports by email too.

Step 3 — Make sure email actually leaves your server

Linkilo sends with WordPress's built-in mailer; no extra plugin is required. If you already use an SMTP plugin, Linkilo uses it automatically. That said, plain WordPress mail is unreliable on many hosts, so if reports don't arrive:

• Install an SMTP plugin such as WP Mail SMTP Lite — free, supports Gmail, Brevo, Mailgun, SendGrid, and custom SMTP
• See SMTP Setup Guide for Broken Link Checker Reports for the full setup

Step 4 — Test

Run a scan to check the whole pipeline:

1. Go to Linkilo → Fix → Broken Link Checker
2. Click Start Scanning and wait for the scan to complete
3. Check your inbox (and spam folder) for the report

The Broken Link Checker page also has an Enable Reporting block with a Reporting Email, Reporting Email Subject and a Test Report button that sends a test message straight away. If the test arrives but scan emails don't, check the master switch and the Broken Link Checker card under Email Notifications. If nothing arrives at all, the issue is almost always email delivery — use your SMTP plugin's email test to confirm it is working.

What's in the report

The scan-complete email is short:

• Hard broken — links that returned an error
• Needs review — links Linkilo couldn't confirm either way (for example sites that block automated checks)
• Links scanned — how many links were checked
• A Review broken links button that opens the Broken Link Checker in your dashboard

Digest emails give the same counts for the period. The fixes themselves happen in Linkilo, either on the Broken Link Checker page or through Linkilo → Fix → Fix Link Health, which groups broken links with the posts they appear in.

Related guides

• Broken Link Checker
• SMTP Setup Guide for Broken Link Checker Reports

Last reviewed for Linkilo 3.0.0 (October 2026).