Per-download notifications (email & webhook) Pro

FileDeck Pro can tell you the moment a document is downloaded — by email, by webhook, or both. Use it to watch a sensitive document, follow up while interest is warm, or pipe download events into Slack, Zapier or Make.

FileDeck Pro — this feature is included in all Pro plans. See pricing

Turn it on

1. Go to Documents → Settings → Downloads.
2. Tick Send a notification for every download.
3. Optionally set:
   • Notification recipients — comma-separated email addresses. Leave blank to use the site admin email.
   • Notification webhook — an https:// URL that receives a JSON POST per download.
4. Save changes.

Notifications fire for single downloads and for each document inside a multi-select zip.

What the email says

Each email names the document and file, who downloaded it (the logged-in user, or "a visitor"), whether it was part of a zip, and the document’s running download total.

As a flood guard, notification emails are capped at 200 per day site-wide (filterable with filedeck_notify_email_daily_cap; 0 removes the cap). The webhook has no cap.

The webhook payload

{
  "event": "document.downloaded",
  "context": "download",
  "document": {
    "id": 123,
    "title": "Employee Handbook",
    "url": "https://example.com/document/employee-handbook/",
    "filename": "employee-handbook.pdf",
    "type": "pdf"
  },
  "user": { "id": 7, "login": "jane", "email": "[email protected]" },
  "downloads": 42,
  "site": "https://example.com/",
  "occurred_at": "2026-07-20T09:30:00+00:00"
}

user is null for logged-out visitors. The webhook is sent non-blocking, so a slow endpoint never slows the download itself. Requires https://.

Privacy

The payload deliberately excludes the visitor’s IP address — the activity log (with its anonymisation option) is the audit surface. Developers can reshape the payload with the filedeck_download_notification_payload filter and the email with filedeck_download_notification_email.

Notes

• Emails rely on your site’s email (wp_mail). On hosts that can’t send mail, use an SMTP plugin.
• A busy public library can generate a lot of email — consider the webhook (into Slack or a spreadsheet) for high-traffic sites.