How Batohi counts an open

Most trackers show you a flattering number. Batohi shows you the true one, and this page explains exactly how.

The problem: most "opens" aren't opens

Email tracking works by loading a tiny image when a message is displayed. But much of what loads that image today is not your recipient reading your email:

• Google's image proxy fetches images on Gmail's behalf — sometimes before anyone looks at the message at all.
• Apple Mail Privacy Protection pre-loads every image for over half of consumer inboxes, whether or not the message is ever read.
• Corporate security scanners and bots open links and images to inspect them.
• You — rereading your own message in your Sent folder fires the same pixel a recipient would.

Industry data (published by the trackers themselves) puts false opens at anywhere from 6% to over half of all recorded opens. A tool that counts them all is telling you a comfortable story, not the truth.

What Batohi does differently

• Proxy and prefetch detection. Fetches from known proxy infrastructure and send-adjacent fetches (an "open" seconds after you hit send) are recorded but not counted as genuine.
• Self-open exclusion. When you view your own sent message, Batohi recognizes it — including retroactively, if the pixel fired before we knew it was you — and removes it from your genuine-open count.
• Bot filtering. Scanner and bot signatures don't count.
• Confidence, stated. When an open can't be confidently attributed to a human, the dashboard says "possibly opened" instead of pretending certainty.

What this means for your numbers

Batohi's open counts will often be lower than what other tools report for the same mail. That is the point. Every count you see is one we would defend: a genuine open, or honestly labeled as uncertain. The same standard carries into everything built on top — recipient engagement tiers and send-time recommendations always show their evidence, never a bare score.

And one promise on the other side of the ledger: Batohi never adds a "Sent with Batohi" signature to your mail. Your recipients see your email, nothing else. Ever, on any plan.