Processing Bounces in PHPlist

Each time you send a message to your list, it's a good idea to process and view bounces received. Please make sure that you have configured PHPlist to handle bouncebacks before proceeding with this step.

Please note, you will need to process bounces before you can view them.

1. If you are not already logged into PHPlist, begin by logging into your PHPlist administration area. For our example we will log in at example.com/newsletter/admin


2. In the menu on the right, click the process bounces link. You will see a message similar to:
   
   


3. As you can see in our example, we have quite a few bounces. If you do not see any bounces processed, your list may have not produced any bounces. You can double check this by logging into your bounce handling email address ( This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. in our example) to check for any bounce back messages. If you are seeing messages in the email inbox, but not in PHPlist, you will want to check your configuration file and make sure the following lines contain the correct information:
   
   $bounce_mailbox_host = 'example.com';
   (could also be set to mail.example.com)
   
   $bounce_mailbox_user = ' This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ';
   (this should be the full email address and should match the $message_envelope address)
   
   $bounce_mailbox_password = 'password';
   (make sure this is your actual password for the email address, not the example password)


4. Once you have processed your bounces, click the view bounces link in the menu on the right side of the screen.


5. This will show you a list of the bouncebacks received. For more details about a bounceback, click the show link to open the bounce.
   
   

Viewing bounces can be helpful if you want to clean up your list manually. For instance, if you see messages that indicate an invalid email address ("No such user here" or similar message) you may want to delete the user from the list. While this isn't required, since PHPlist will mark the user unconfirmed after the bounce threshold is reached, this can help you keep your list streamlined and clean.