Bounce management / handling with Postmark, Sendgrid, Amazon SES

[Gossipy]

Hi everyone - we have spent some time on the forums here but have not come up with a good answer. We seem to be outgrowing our Google Workspace accounts for outbound email handling as we occasionally bump up against Google's outbound daily limit (2k messages per day). In order to prepare for future spikes we are evaluating Postmark (preferred), Sendgrid, and Amazon SES.

I have a few questions relating to bounce & unsubscribe handling I'm hoping you XF experts can help with.

1. After our review, we are inclined to move to Postmark. However I see no good way to automate bounce handling with Xenforo other than perhaps building our own webhook/routine which we don't have the skill to manage. Am I mistaken?
2. Are there any similar solutions for Sendgrid?
3. Finally, I found an unsupported add-on to aid in bounce handling with Amazon SES but that doesn't really give us the warm and fuzzies. Are there any other options that work well with Amazon SES?

Again our preference is Postmark but we'd really, really like to get Xenforo + Postmark working together on bounce handling (and ideally unsubscribes).

Thank you in advance.

 

[ekool]

I'm interested in how people are handling bounces with other providers as well.

 

[DeltaHF]

However I see no good way to automate bounce handling with Xenforo other than perhaps building our own webhook/routine which we don't have the skill to manage. Am I mistaken?

I have not used Postmark, but XenForo's bounce handling works by using the return-path header, which I do believe is supported by Postmark as well as Sendgrid. This is the address you list in the XF admin control panel, and XF includes it in outgoing emails. This address is how your user's mail servers know where to send the "bounce" messages when they reject a message.

I use Amazon SES, and my bounced email address is a dedicated, plain-vanilla Gmail account. XenForo logs into it, checks to see what bounced emails and addresses are in there, and takes action accordingly. My forum sends thousands of emails every day with the stock XenForo bounced email handling and it works great; I see no need for an add-on.

 

[TPerry]

use Amazon SES, and my bounced email address is a dedicated, plain-vanilla Gmail account. XenForo logs into it, checks to see what bounced emails and addresses are in there, and takes action accordingly

Similar but I use a ZoHo account that I am grandfathered under. I have separate accounts for bounced and unsubscribe with it, then my main admin account and my personal user account.

 

[Gossipy]

I have not used Postmark, but XenForo's bounce handling works by using the return-path header, which I do believe is supported by Postmark as well as Sendgrid. This is the address you list in the XF admin control panel, and XF includes it in outgoing emails. This address is how your user's mail servers know where to send the "bounce" messages when they reject a message.

I use Amazon SES, and my bounced email address is a dedicated, plain-vanilla Gmail account. XenForo logs into it, checks to see what bounced emails and addresses are in there, and takes action accordingly. My forum sends thousands of emails every day with the stock XenForo bounced email handling and it works great; I see no need for an add-on.

Thank you. How have you managed to get SES to preserve Xenforo's "Return-Path" header? I'm not an expert but looking at the source headers of some outbound test emails that we sent from the XF ACP through SES, that "Return-Path" header is being rewritten by SES to "xxxxxxxxxxx@us-east-2.amazonses.com". There is no sign of our XF-configured bounce address in the message headers. Bounces are being sent to our "From" address, not to the bounce address we've configured in XF. I assume SES does this so that they can track bounces, complaints, etc. but I am a bit out of my depth and puzzled.

 

[DeltaHF]

Thank you. How have you managed to get SES to preserve Xenforo's "Return-Path" header? I'm not an expert but looking at the source headers of some outbound test emails that we sent from the XF ACP through SES, that "Return-Path" header is being rewritten by SES to "xxxxxxxxxxx@us-east-2.amazonses.com". There is no sign of our XF-configured bounce address in the message headers. Bounces are being sent to our "From" address, not to the bounce address we've configured in XF. I assume SES does this so that they can track bounces, complaints, etc. but I am a bit out of my depth and puzzled.

Yes, Amazon rewrites its own Return-Path so that it can monitor bounces and complaints, there is no way around that.

I don't think my previous message was correct (sorry, it has been 5+ years since I set it up and have not needed to tinker with the configuration since then). Amazon is forwarding the emails based upon the "Email feedback forwarding destination" configured in your account, which must be a "verified identity" in your Amazon SES account. That's how the bounce emails get sent to my dedicated bounce-handling email address for XF.

Check out the documentation here:

Receiving Amazon SES notifications through email - Amazon Simple Email Service

Receive notifications about bounces and complaints for emails that you send through Amazon SES.

docs.aws.amazon.com

 

[motowebmaster]

I use Postmark, but haven't bothered trying to intergrate it with Xenforo's bounce handling. Had my user email list cleaned a few years ago, but these days so few bounces are actually happening it seems to work better letting Postmark handle it.

Postmark has a creative way to address problems regarding poorly managed ISPs or Mail Servers, on AWS it wasn't managed as well. Spam Complaints are similar, but just like the way Postmark displays it.

 

[DeltaHF]

Postmark has a creative way to address problems regarding poorly managed ISPs or Mail Servers,

What do they do?

 

[motowebmaster]

For example, a bounced email may end up being delivered. You can make that happen in AWS, but at Postmark it's default. The end result being that more emails are being delivered. Now a hard-bounce usually represents someone who made a decision to block my notification emails. It took some time within Postmark for this to happen, it wasn't on immediately done on all emails.

Spam complaints are auto-blocked, like they are in AWS, but you see more detail by default on Postmark. We've done some education for the users on this, and this issue seldom happens these days.

Hope this helps,

 

[snoopy5]

Yes, Amazon rewrites its own Return-Path so that it can monitor bounces and complaints, there is no way around that.

I don't think my previous message was correct (sorry, it has been 5+ years since I set it up and have not needed to tinker with the configuration since then). Amazon is forwarding the emails based upon the "Email feedback forwarding destination" configured in your account, which must be a "verified identity" in your Amazon SES account. That's how the bounce emails get sent to my dedicated bounce-handling email address for XF.

Check out the documentation here:

Receiving Amazon SES notifications through email - Amazon Simple Email Service

Receive notifications about bounces and complaints for emails that you send through Amazon SES.

docs.aws.amazon.com

@DeltaHF

I try to test this now for me. Could you please describe how you do this step by step?

I use an email address noreply@mydomian.com for sending out my emails. The whole domain is verified at Amazon. Now I need something for the bounces to work properly with XF<->Amazon.

For the bounces I use another email address called "bounces@mydomain.com" in Xenforo ACP
.

1. I add in Amazon SES my bounce email address "bounces@mydomain".com" and verify this email address
2. Then I click on this verified email address -> click on tab "notifications"

But then I get confused. See screenshot

The manual at Amazon sais only to enable it. See screenshot:







This is already done.




But in XF ACP my sending email address is another one then the bounce email address. Does the sending email address and bounce email address has to be the same in Amazon SES ?

Normally Xenforo uses 2 different email addresses for sending and bouncing. So how shall this work at all?

Can you please also post which email address you enter in XF ACP for bounces, sending emails etc.. so that it is sent via Amazon SES?

 

[GW2]

@DeltaHF

I try to test this now for me. Could you please describe how you do this step by step?

I use an email address noreply@mydomian.com for sending out my emails. The whole domain is verified at Amazon. Now I need something for the bounces to work properly with XF<->Amazon.

For the bounces I use another email address called "bounces@mydomain.com" in Xenforo ACP
.

1. I add in Amazon SES my bounce email address "bounces@mydomain".com" and verify this email address
2. Then I click on this verified email address -> click on tab "notifications"

But then I get confused. See screenshot

The manual at Amazon sais only to enable it. See screenshot:

View attachment 287270





This is already done.


View attachment 287269

But in XF ACP my sending email address is another one then the bounce email address. Does the sending email address and bounce email address has to be the same in Amazon SES ?

Normally Xenforo uses 2 different email addresses for sending and bouncing. So how shall this work at all?

Can you please also post which email address you enter in XF ACP for bounces, sending emails etc.. so that it is sent via Amazon SES?

@snoopy5 I sent you a screen shot of my XF email configuration using Amazon SES. My biggest problem was trying to figure out what my Amazon SES username is to plug into XF.

Here is a helpful thread with discussion on this topic: https://xenforo.com/community/threads/amazon-ses-questions.208178/