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
Managed Mautic vs tiered ESP pricing
Hosted email platforms charge by contact count; managed Mautic pairs a flat hosting fee with pay-per-send delivery. Enter your list size, sending frequency and delivery vendor, and see where the total costs cross.
Runs entirely in your browser — nothing is sent or stored. Delivery vendor figures for SendGrid are vendor-verified (Twilio pricing page, 2026); Brevo figures from Brevo's help centre, Postmark from third-party reporting (2026). ESP tier prices (Mailchimp Standard, ActiveCampaign Starter) verified September 2026 against published vendor and third-party pricing, converted from USD at ~$1.30/£; ActiveCampaign figures are annual-billing rates. Above the largest verified tier the model extrapolates — confirm exact prices in each vendor's pricing calculator. All figures indicative — always check current pricing with the vendor before any decision.
Above the crossover?
Managed Mautic with the delivery layer priced in, line by line — and you work with the person who runs the infrastructure.
More tools
Free, browser-based, nothing to sign up for.
Email authentication checker
Check any domain's SPF, DKIM and DMARC — records shown, interpreted in plain English.
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.
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.