Problem bounce rate e-mails. SMTP.COM howis because of it!

[fionix]

Hello,

I have signed up and paid for the small package at SMTP.COM because name.com was so nice to block for SMTP because the forum is sending out e-mails to the users. name.com deny to have blocked anything and just send me nonsense e-mails from their support.

Anyway, after everything is setup with smtp.com things were great until yesterday where they started to grumble about the bounce rate and warned me they will close my account. see below:

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After we have reviewed your account statistics for the current month, we have noticed that the email traffic sent is hitting vital barriers for successful email delivery, namely the email Hard Bounce Rate.

Email Hard Bounce Rate: currently, it's on the high side for your account - 15.42% while our system tolerates not more than 5%. Vast majority of those bounced emails fall into "user unknown" category, meaning that there are a number of invalid email addresses on your mailing lists.

Please go to "REPORTING" section on your control panel at https://ncp1.smtp.com/ - "MY REPORTS" tab and by clicking "Add CSV report" button you will be able to generate reports on Hard Bounces/Bounces/Complaints. For this situation I advise choosing the following:

Type: Hard bounce only;
Time Period: Last 3 months;
Report Fields: Customize and flag only Recipient.
Leave all other fields as is and press Save button.

This will generate a file you can download and view. (Generating might take a few minutes) It will contain a list of Hard Bounced emails for the last 3 months. Such invalid addresses must be removed from your mailing lists.

Please let us know once it is done. Your cooperation is highly appreciated.
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I told them that some users may have entered false e-mail addresses or the e-mails don't work any longer, and I can't stop the forum to send e-mails to these accounts, which also will be my questions later below this post!

So they replied with something I don't get!!
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Thank you for your prompts reply. In this case I can recommend two options:

a) Implementing CAPTCHA to prevent automated subscriptions
b) Implementing Confirmed Opt In (COI) to prevent that abusers can add random email addresses to the newsletter service that are not owned by the subscriber (a visible field that could be filled by a human, but cannot be filed out by a bot - a question & answer type of field; OR a hidden field that will be ignored by a human, but will get filled out by a bot, due to the bot pulling field data from page source and not realizing that the field is actually not visible to a human visitor)
c) Implementing double opt in mechanism.
That should resolve current issues with invalid email addresses. Repeated warnings on hard bounce rate may lead to account termination.
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Can someone help me how to solve this issue? I'm looking for another SMTP provider that don't suck that much, but if there is a quick fix to this issue it would be easier

 

[whynot]

Can someone help me how to solve this issue? I'm looking for another SMTP provider that don't suck that much, but if there is a quick fix to this issue it would be easier

Your new members must click on the link in the registration email to confirm their wish to become a member of your forum.
Do not accept disposable email addresses.(block *.*@*)

 

[Pierce]

All SMTP providers are going to get itchy about bounce rates.

You need to take those bounces and mark their accounts as such.

 

[Pierce]

Your new members must click on the link in the registration email to confirm their wish to become a member of your forum.
Do not accept disposable email addresses.(block *.*@*)

Why block firstname.lastname@gmail.com ??

 

[Mouth]

Email Hard Bounce Rate: currently, it's on the high side for your account - 15.42%

/admin.php?options/list/usersAndRegistration and ensure you have Enable Email Confirmation ticked, and have both captcha and anti-spam measures active
/admin.php?options/list/emailOptions and ensure you have bounce handling enabled.

SMTP provider that don't suck that much

That's quite ironic. I would argue that your site and your administration sucks, as evident by your 15% hard bounce rate (it should be less than 1%) and your apparent claim that 15% of your users utilise bogus methods to bypass receiving email from you.

 

[fionix]

well it sucks that they care about it and want to terminate my account if I don't get the bounce rate down otherwise they are fine. Thanks for the advice above, just implemented it, let's hope it gets better now.

 

[whynot]

Why block firstname.lastname@gmail.com ??

It's hard to register thousands of firstname_lastname@gmail.com addresses.
firstname.lastname@gmail.com is relatively easy.