Do SMTP Servers give notice on email delivery

Question

User-1204637165 posted

Dear All,

I am setting up my own mailing infrastructure for bulk mails for my organisation. My system is meant to send email to an smtp server.

But I want to know when emails have been delivered or not. Please how do I know this. What is the secret around this.

Plesae I am not using a specialized platform for this. See it like am setting up the owl mail infrastructure on my end.

I would be configuring a VPS as my mailing server with a mailclient software on it, to send the emails. If I send email to my VPS mailing server how do I know if the mail was delivered or pending.

Best Regards,

Jide Akindejoye

Answer 1

User-474980206 posted

They don’t give notice of delivery. Some may be configured to give bounce back notice for a couple reasons, but due to spammers this has been reduced. If the mailbox is not defined, and the server is configured, you can get a response email (it will be a reply with a message). Also after a couple days, you may get a mailbox full, or undeliverable if a server in the chain fails.

Answer 2

User-1204637165 posted

Dear Bruce,

Sorry Bruce. I didnt quite get this part

If the mailbox is not defined, and the server is configured, you can get a response email (it will be a reply with a message). Also after a couple days, you may get a mailbox full, or undeliverable if a server in the chain fails.

are you saying that I have to configure a mailbox to listen for response ?

Thanks for responding. I really appreciate.

Best Regards,

JIde.

Answer 3

User-474980206 posted

Mail servers that are configured to respond with bounced mail, send a reply email to the from address. So yes, if you want to handle failed delivery, you need to monitor the mailbox you are sending from. It may also take several days to get the reply. 

the only delivery error get from the smtp server, is if it fails to write to its work storage, bad format, etc, nothing about other servers.