Why are my email bounces not showing up in the webhook?

A few common reasons this happens:

1. Your provider doesn’t send all bounce types to that webhook

   • Some systems send only events like delivered/opened/clicked, while hard/soft bounces may be sent on a different webhook, endpoint, or only in a message log.

2. Bounce processing is delayed

   • Real bounces can arrive minutes later, especially if the remote mail server defers delivery or the provider retries first.

3. The email never left your platform’s “accepted” state

   • If the message was rejected before sending, you may get a send-fail or reject event instead of a bounce.

4. Your webhook subscription is incomplete

   • The bounce event type may not be enabled in the dashboard/API config.

5. The webhook is receiving the event but your code is dropping it

   • Common causes:
     • parsing the wrong field
     • filtering by the wrong event name
     • expecting “bounce” but receiving “hard_bounce” / “blocked” / “deferred”
     • signature validation failure causing you to ignore the request

6. You’re testing with addresses that don’t produce bounces

   • Some test inboxes accept mail but never generate a true DSN bounce.

7. Email authentication/reputation issues

   • If your domain/IP is blocked or failing SPF/DKIM/DMARC, the provider may classify it as a rejection, not a bounce.

What to check

• Confirm bounce events are enabled in your email provider settings.
• Look in the provider’s event/activity logs for the message ID.
• Check whether the event is named something like bounce, hard_bounce, blocked, deferred, or rejected.
• Verify your webhook endpoint returns 200 OK quickly.
• Test with a known invalid recipient on a real domain and compare logs.

If you tell me which email service you’re using (SendGrid, Mailgun, SES, Postmark, etc.) and paste a sample webhook payload, I can point to the exact reason.