Bounce Types Explained: Hard vs Soft, and What They Actually Cost You
A bounced email looks like one lost send. It isn't. Hard vs soft bounces explained in plain English — and why your sender reputation pays for every one of them.
Tools
Check your email authentication
Enter a domain and see its SPF, DKIM and DMARC posture as the major inbox providers see it — including the exact DNS records, interpreted in plain English. No signup, nothing sent, nothing stored.
This tool runs entirely in your browser. Nothing is sent, logged or stored — your domain is queried directly against public DNS.
What these records do
Three lines of DNS text decide whether the inbox trusts your mail.
SPF
Lists the servers allowed to send mail for your domain. Too many includes, and the record silently stops being evaluated.
DKIM
Cryptographically signs your outgoing mail so receivers can verify it was not tampered with in transit.
DMARC
Tells receivers what to do when SPF or DKIM fail — and where to send the reports. Published as p=none is watching, not enforcing.
Bad results?
The audit starts at £150, and the first conversation is free.
More tools
Free, browser-based, nothing to sign up for.
DMARC report viewer
Upload the aggregate report your inbox provider sends you — get plain English back on who's sending as you.
Preflight checklist
Ten checks to run before every campaign send — verified in minutes, before your sender reputation pays.
Deliverability ROI calculator
What is better email performance worth to you? Honest numbers out, every assumption shown.
Mautic vs ESP cost comparison
Managed Mautic against typical ESP pricing — find the subscriber count where the crossover happens.
From the blog
View all posts »Straightforward guides and updates on authentication, deliverability and overall strategy.
The DMARC Report Reading Checklist: What to Look At First
Aggregate reports arrive as unreadable XML. This is the reading order — which fields matter, which to ignore, and what each finding means for your next move.
The IP Warm-Up Playbook: How to Start Sending Without Burning Your Sender Reputation
New sending infrastructure has no reputation — which receivers treat as suspicious. This is the staged process for building reputation deliberately, and the mistakes that burn it in week one.
List Hygiene for Small Businesses: Why Dead Addresses Are Worse Than No List at All
Bigger list, more sends — that used to be the whole logic of email marketing. It no longer works like that. How to prune a list, when to do it, and why keeping dead addresses hurts you.