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Email Forwarding and Bounced Emails

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When a forwarded email bounces at the destination, the bounce goes to DNSimple’s email forwarding service. It is not forwarded back to the original sender, so the sender does not know the message failed. Check your email forwards yourself: send test emails, and fix or delete forwards whose destination no longer accepts mail.

For bounces in general, see Email Bounces.

How bounces work with email forwarding

When someone sends an email to a forwarded address:

  1. The email arrives at DNSimple’s email forwarding service.
  2. The service forwards it to the destination address.
  3. If the destination cannot deliver it, the destination returns a bounce to the forwarding service.

Because the bounce stops at the forwarding service, you may not receive any notice that forwarded email is bouncing.

Types of bounces with forwarding

Hard bounces

A hard bounce is a permanent delivery failure at the destination.

Common causes:

  • The destination email address is invalid or misspelled
  • The destination mailbox does not exist
  • The destination domain does not exist

Hard bounces do not fix themselves. Correct the destination address, or delete the email forward.

Soft bounces

A soft bounce is a temporary delivery failure at the destination.

Common causes:

  • The destination mailbox is full
  • The destination server is temporarily unavailable
  • The message is larger than the destination accepts

The forwarding service may retry delivery. If the problem persists, the soft bounce may become a hard bounce.

Fix forwarded email that bounces

Fix a bouncing email forward
  1. Open the domain, and click .
  2. Check the destination address of the email forward for typos.
  3. Send an email directly to the destination address, without the forward. If it bounces too, the problem is at the destination: the mailbox is full, closed, or rejecting mail. Fix it there, or choose another destination.
  4. If the destination address changed, click the menu at the end of the row, select , update the address, and click .
  5. If the destination no longer exists, delete the email forward. See How to Add and Remove Email Forwards.
  6. Send a test email to the forwarded address, and check that it arrives.

If the destination accepts email sent directly but not email forwarded through DNSimple, its spam filtering may be rejecting forwarded mail. See Email Forwarding Not Working with Gmail or Email Forwarding Issues with Outlook and Yahoo.

Other reasons email to a forwarded address bounces

Some email bounces before the forwarding service sends it to a destination:

  • No email forward for the address: email sent to an address with no email forward bounces, unless the domain has a catch-all forward.
  • Monthly message limit reached: when a domain reaches its plan’s monthly message limit, email sent to its forwarded addresses bounces until the limit resets. See Email Forwarding Limits and Quotas.

If nothing arrives at all, including test emails, the cause is usually the domain’s MX records. See Email Forwarding Not Working.

Prevent bounces

  • Check destination addresses for typos when you create email forwards.
  • Update email forwards as soon as a destination address changes.
  • Delete email forwards whose destination no longer exists.
  • Send a test email to each forwarded address from time to time, because bounces are not reported to you or the sender.

Have more questions?

If you have additional questions or need any assistance with handling email bounces with email forwarding, contact support, and we will be happy to help. You can also read more about email forwarding at DNSimple.