How do webhooks help with tracking email delivery and bounce events?

Webhooks help by pushing real-time event notifications from your email provider to your app whenever something happens with an email, instead of you repeatedly checking an API.

How they help with tracking delivery and bounces

• Delivery events: When an email is successfully accepted or delivered, the provider sends your webhook endpoint a notification.
• Bounce events: If the email can’t be delivered, the provider sends a bounce notification, often including the reason:
  • Hard bounce: permanent failure, like an invalid address
  • Soft bounce: temporary issue, like a full inbox or server problem

Why this is useful

• Real-time status updates: You know almost immediately whether emails were delivered or bounced.
• Less polling: No need to keep querying the provider for status.
• Better automation: You can automatically:
  • mark addresses as invalid after hard bounces
  • retry soft bounces
  • alert users or support teams
  • update delivery metrics and dashboards

Typical flow

1. You send an email through an email service.
2. The service tracks the email’s lifecycle.
3. When delivery or bounce happens, it sends a webhook POST to your server.
4. Your server processes the event and updates your database or workflow.

Example

If you send a password reset email:

• Delivered webhook → mark it as delivered
• Bounce webhook → flag the user’s address and maybe ask them to update it

If you want, I can also show a simple example webhook payload for delivery vs. bounce events.