How do I check the status of emails sent via Postal?

If you make a mailing via Postal, you can check the status of the e-mails sent via the web interface. No overall statistics are presented, but you can look at the progress of a particular e-mail message, etc.

Finding the logs

To access the logging of sent emails in Postal, follow these instructions:

Begin by logging on to Postal’s control panel.
Click on the mail server you want to check the logs on. As long as you have not set up multiple mail servers yourself, you should only have one choice here.
Click on Messages -> Outgoing Messages in the menu.
You will now see a list of emails sent using your mail server:

The list shows the subject line of the messages, the recipients, the sender’s address, the date the messages were sent and their status.
If you click on one of the messages, you will see details about it:

Statuses

Each email sent out via Postal is marked with a status based on the outcome of the mailing. The different statuses that emails can have are as follows:

Sent means that the mail has been sent as it should and has been handed over to the receiving mail server.

Pending tells us that the email is queued and waiting to be sent.

Held means that an email is held by the server and not placed in the mail queue. This is usually because the recipient of the mail is in the mail server’s so-called suppression list. A mail address ends up there after repeated failed deliveries within a short period of time. Postal tries to deliver messages with the status Held again after it has been in Held for a week.

Soft fail indicates that the attempt to send the email failed, but that further delivery attempts will be made. Very often it’s because the receiving server has received several emails in the same mailing from a certain domain and/or IP address, and they just want to make sure it’s not spam by asking the sending server (Postal) to try again later. It could also be that the receiving server has technical problems, or that the domain has no MX pointers.

Hard fail means that the email could not be delivered. This may be because the receiving email address does not exist, its mailbox is full, or the email is considered spam. In addition, if an email has been attempted to be delivered 18 times, and all delivery attempts resulted in a soft fail, the email will eventually be marked as a hard fail.

Bounced means that a delivery resulted in a hard fail immediately, and a bounce message was generated by the receiving server. In the bounce email you can find more information about why the delivery failed.

A message sent via Postal may have had several different statuses before the one you see in the list and on the details page. Click on the Activity tab to see how the mail got the status it currently has.