Ever since Mandrill went paid-only, for my light transaction e-mail usage I have been using MailGun. Love the service, except for one little thing: You do not have a way to get notified of bounced e-mails.
Dropped e-mails are a big deal, and they should be treated as such. I have been getting a 23% bounce rate for weeks without even noticing. If it wasn’t for a client that contacted us again saying they haven’t heard back, I don’t even know when I would detect the problem.
After the problem is fixed, I need to work on a way to prevent it from happening in the future.
Tracking Dropped MailGun E-mails
Currently, the only way of tracking dropped e-mails on MailGun is using their awesome webhooks functionality. They are great because you can react to the event any way you want, but on the other hand, you need to spend extra time setting it up.
Since I am way too lazy to write my own script and host it somewhere just to notify me of dropped e-mails. I started the search for a 2-click solution which ended up taking longer then if I had decided to write the script on my own.
IFTTT To The Rescue
If you have been on the internet for a while, you must have heard of IFTTT. It is a service that allows you to react to any of the hundreds of triggers, with any of the hundreds of actions.
In it’s core, the concept is simple. But all possible trigger-action combinations are what make this platform amazing.
How to set up dropped mail notifications?
- Sign up for IFTTT.
- Go to My Applets and create your own.
- Choose the “Maker Webhook” trigger:
4. Choose “Receive a web request” and enter a unique name:
5. The action is the part of our Applet that lets us know that an e-mail was dropped. Pick an action that works the best for you. (I recommend Notification, SMS, or triggering a loud siren with red flashing lights using your smart house system)
6. Applet finished, lets deal with the webhook.
7. If you visit the Maker Webhook settings you can find your unique webhook URL.
8. Visit that URL and copy the trigger URL and replace the “{event}” placeholder with the event name you defined in step 4.
9. Open the MailGun webhook settings and add a webhook with the URL from the previous step for the dropped delivery event.
10. Install the IFTTT mobile app if you have chosen the Notifications action as the means of delivering the info to you as I did.
