Meow Mailer – Free SMTP, Everything Included vs PixelVault – Media Library Folders & Asset Manager

For years, almost every WordPress site I ran ended up with a different plugin just to send email. I never really chose them. I installed whatever looked fine at the time, because honestly there is no clear winner. Most of them advertise features I don’t need, or hide the basics behind a paywall. At one point I simply wanted to see the emails my site had sent, or failed to send, and even that asked me to upgrade. That felt wrong. So I decided to build the simplest and most honest email plugin I could for WordPress. You pick one provider, set it up once, and every email your site sends goes through it. Everything is logged, so you always know what happened. No upsell maze, no ads, nothing basic locked away. That is Meow Mailer, and all of this is free: One provider, set up once. Pick the one you use and forget about it. No confusing multi provider routing. Import from your current SMTP plugin. Already set up with WP Mail SMTP or Easy WP SMTP? Meow Mailer notices and copies the provider, credentials and sender over in one click, so switching never means digging out your API keys again. A fallback for when it breaks, free. Name a second provider (or plain WordPress, which needs no setup) and it steps in only when the first one refuses an email. Your mail still goes out, the log tells you exactly who failed and why, and an alert lets you know your main provider needs a look. A real email log, free. Every email in a clean table with recipient, subject, provider and status (sent, failed, offline, pending). Click any row to read the full message, see the error, and resend it. Many plugins charge for this. Here it is free. Stays out of the way. Until you pick a provider, Meow Mailer doesn’t change how your email is sent, so activating it never breaks what already works. It still logs everything WordPress sends on its own, so you get the log from the moment you activate it. Never miss a failure. A dashboard warning appears when emails fail, so silent problems don’t go unnoticed. Dismiss it once you have had a look and it stays away until a new email fails. Failure alerts by email, free. Get told when your site stops being able to send, instead of finding out from a customer. The alert is sent by WordPress itself rather than your provider, so it still reaches you when the provider is the thing that broke. One alert per hour at most, however many emails fail. Alerts on Slack, Discord or Teams, free. Paste a webhook URL and the alerts and the weekly summary are posted to your chat as well, so finding out that email is broken never depends on email. Handy when you look after a lot of sites. Individual emails are never posted anywhere: this tells you about your site, not about the people it writes to. Weekly summary, free. A short email with what was sent, what failed, and the most common errors. Nothing is sent on a quiet week. Control WordPress’s own emails. Switch off the notifications WordPress sends by itself: new user registrations, password and email change confirmations, comment moderation, automatic update reports. Password resets are never affected, so nobody gets locked out. Background sending. Email goes out after the page has loaded, so your visitors never wait on the mail server. Offline mode. Capture every email in the log without sending. Perfect for staging and development. Filters and export. Filter by status and provider, search by subject or recipient, and export to CSV. Test and resend. Check your setup with an HTML or plain text test, and resend any logged message in one click. Auto prune. Keep logs forever, or delete anything older than 7, 30 or 90 days. Multisite ready. Set your provider up once on the main site and let every site of the network use it, or leave each site to configure its own. Email logs always stay per site. Light and private. No bloat, no tracking. Your credentials can live in wp-config.php instead of the database. What Meow Mailer will never do No open or click tracking. Other email plugins advertise it as a premium feature. It works by putting an invisible pixel in every message and rewriting every link to pass through a redirect, which means logging when your recipients read their mail and what they clicked. That is surveillance of the people your site writes to, it is personal data you then have to account for under the GDPR, and rewritten links make your email look more like spam, not less. Meow Mailer does not do it, and that is not a gap waiting to be filled in a Pro version. There is no Pro version. Supported providers Generic SMTP, Mailgun, Brevo, SendGrid, Amazon SES, Postmark, SMTP2GO, Mailjet, Resend, MailerSend, Maileroo, Gmail / Google Workspace (OAuth 2.0), Microsoft 365 / Outlook (OAuth 2.0), and Zoho Mail (OAuth 2.0). About Meow Apps Meow Mailer is part of the Meow Apps family of plugins, focused on doing one thing well with a clean, modern interface. External services Meow Mailer contacts an external service only after you choose and configure an email provider. Until then (the default “None”) and in “Offline” mode, it sends nothing anywhere. When you pick a provider, your outgoing email (recipients, subject, body, headers and attachments) and the credentials you entered are sent to that provider so it can be delivered, and only when your site actually sends an email. For Gmail, Microsoft 365 and Zoho Mail, Meow Mailer also contacts their OAuth servers when you connect and refresh your account. Nothing else is ever sent. You choose a single provider. Generic SMTP talks only to the server you configure. For the others, please review their terms and privacy policy: Mailgun (terms, privacy), Brevo (terms, privacy), SendGrid (terms, privacy), Amazon SES (terms, privacy), Postmark (terms, privacy), SMTP2GO (terms, privacy), Mailjet (terms, privacy), Resend (terms, privacy), MailerSend (terms and privacy), Maileroo (terms, privacy), Gmail (terms, privacy), Microsoft 365 (terms, privacy), and Zoho Mail (terms, privacy). Development Meow Mailer is open source. The full source, including the React code used to build the admin interface, lives on GitHub.

📁 PixelVault is the free way to organize your WordPress media library with unlimited, drag-and-drop media folders, and now to present those folders as a downloadable Document Library on the front end. Sort images, videos, PDFs, audio, and documents into nested, colour-coded folders right inside the Media Library, then publish any folder as a browsable asset manager for your visitors. Stop scrolling through hundreds of unsorted attachments. PixelVault lets you categorize media into folders and subfolders, filter instantly, and find any file in seconds — a proper file manager for your WordPress media. Folders are virtual — physical files never move, no URLs change, nothing breaks, and standard WordPress export/import keeps working without any special steps. 🆕 Document Library block (new in 1.2.0) Turn any media folder into a browsable, downloadable document library on the front end, no page builder required. The PixelVault Document Library Gutenberg block renders a folder as an accessible file browser with a sidebar folder tree, breadcrumb navigation, in-library search, pagination, and per-file downloads. 🗂️ Folder tree and breadcrumb: visitors browse nested folders without page reloads 🔍 Search and pagination: find files fast inside large folders ⬇️ Per-file download plus Download-all ZIP: grab one file or the whole folder in a click 🎨 Three design presets (Cards, Compact, Minimal), with an accent colour and a framed option ♿ Accessibility-first: full keyboard navigation (WAI-ARIA tree pattern), screen-reader friendly 📱 Fully responsive: grid and list layouts adapt to mobile 🔒 Respects folder visibility: restricted folders stay hidden from guests Perfect for knowledge bases, press kits, resource centres, download portals, and product documentation. ✨ Core Features 📂 Unlimited nested folders and subfolders — no depth limit, no folder count limit 🔗 Assign files to multiple folders — one file can appear in as many folders as you like 🎨 Folder colour coding — colour-label folders for instant visual orientation 🖱️ Drag-and-drop sidebar — reorder folders, move files, and create subfolders by dragging ⚡ Auto-assign uploads — new files go straight into whichever folder is selected 🔍 Search and sort — find folders instantly; sort manually, by name, or by file count ⌨️ Keyboard shortcut — press “n” to create a new folder 🖲️ Right-click context menu — Rename, Delete, Lock, Create subfolders, Copy gallery shortcode, Import ZIP to folder, Download all files 🌐 RTL language support — full right-to-left layout 🛠️ Organisation and Productivity Tools 📦 ZIP File Import Right-click any folder and choose “Import ZIP to folder”. Upload a .zip archive and PixelVault extracts and assigns every image, video, audio file, and PDF directly into that folder. 🗺️ Media Usage Map Right-click any image and choose “Where is this used?” to see every post, page, or custom post type that references the file — useful before replacing or deleting files. ⬇️ Bulk Download as ZIP Right-click any folder to download all its files as a ZIP archive. 🔒 Folder Locking Lock any folder to prevent accidental renaming, deletion, moving, or file reassignment. Locked folders display a padlock badge. 📊 Storage Analytics Full storage overview with total size, average file size, file-type breakdown chart, top-10 largest files, and per-folder size distribution. Available under Settings → Analytics and as a WordPress Dashboard widget. ✏️ Bulk Alt Text Editor Batch-edit alt text on all images that are missing it — useful for accessibility and image SEO. Edit multiple files at once without opening each one individually. 🔄 Media Replace Swap any file in place, keeping the same URL and attachment ID. All existing references on posts and pages continue to work automatically. 🎯 Smart Filters Dynamic built-in views that update automatically: Missing Alt Text, Unused Files, Recent Uploads, and Large Files. 🗂️ Auto-Categorise Existing Media Bulk-organise your existing media library in one click via the import icon at the bottom of the folder panel. Choose a rule: 📅 By Year — creates a folder per year (e.g. 2023, 2024). 🗓️ By Month — creates a folder per month (e.g. January 2024, February 2024). 🏷️ By File Type — creates Images, Videos, Audio, PDFs, Documents, and Spreadsheets folders. Choose Unassigned only to leave already-organised files untouched, or All files to reassign everything. PixelVault previews the result before making any changes. 🚚 Import from Other Plugins One-click migration from FileBird, Real Media Library, WP Media Folder, and Enhanced Media Library. Folder hierarchy and all file assignments are copied automatically. Go to Settings → Tools → Import from Another Plugin. The original plugin’s data is never modified. 💾 Export and Import Back up your entire folder structure as a JSON file and restore it on any WordPress site — no SQL required. 🔐 Role Permissions Granular folder access per WordPress user role: control who can create, edit, and delete folders independently. 🧩 Gutenberg, Elementor, and Divi 📚 PixelVault Document Library block — publish a folder as an accessible, downloadable file library with a folder tree, search, pagination, and Download-all ZIP 🖼️ PixelVault Gallery block — insert a folder’s contents as a responsive gallery with lightbox directly in the block editor 📝 [pixelvault_gallery] shortcode — classic editor, widgets, and theme template support 🎛️ Elementor — folder panel works inside the Elementor media modal 🏗️ Divi — folder panel works in the Divi backend builder and the Divi Front End Builder 🌍 Universal compatibility — PixelVault hooks into WordPress’s native media modal, so it works with any theme or page builder 🏛️ Architecture: Virtual Taxonomy PixelVault stores folder assignments in WordPress’s native taxonomy tables (wp_term_relationships). Physical files stay exactly where they are. Deleting a folder never deletes files. 👩‍💻 For Developers Full REST API and documented action/filter hooks. 🔌 REST API — Full CRUD at /wp-json/rayetun-medianest/v1/folders. Authenticate with X-WP-Nonce. ⚙️ Action hooks (selection): rayetun_medianest_folder_created( $term_id, $folder_id, $args ) rayetun_medianest_folder_renamed( $term_id, $new_name ) rayetun_medianest_folder_moved( $term_id, $new_parent, $old_parent ) rayetun_medianest_folder_deleted( $term_id, $folder_object ) rayetun_medianest_folders_reordered( $ordered_term_ids ) rayetun_medianest_attachment_assigned( $attachment_id, $term_ids, $context ) 🔧 Filter hooks (selection): rayetun_medianest_get_folders( $folders, $post_type ) — modify the folder list rayetun_medianest_auto_assign_target( $term_id, $attachment_id ) — override the upload target folder rayetun_medianest_smart_folders( $defs ) — register custom dynamic folders JavaScript hooks (via @wordpress/hooks) let you add items to the folder/image context menus and the bulk-action bar. A full list of PHP and JavaScript hooks with examples ships in HOOKS.md inside the plugin.