When an email is sent from a normal mailbox, you have almost no way of knowing what happened to it. When it goes through an SMTP relay with statistics, you do. For Australian businesses that send invoices, booking confirmations or account notices, that visibility answers the most common support question in one click: “Did they get it?”
What Mailpro records for SMTP sends
- Every message: recipient, subject, time sent and status.
- Delivery status: delivered, deferred or bounced, with the reason given by the receiving server.
- Opens and clicks: if tracking is enabled, when the email was opened and which links were clicked. See SMTP email tracking.
- Aggregate reports: totals and trends over time, in the SMTP server statistics dashboard.
How Australian businesses use them
Proving an invoice was delivered
When a client says they never received an invoice, the log shows the delivery time and whether it was opened. That is particularly useful around EOFY, when overdue invoices need to be chased before 30 June. Our article on proving invoice delivery with SMTP logs shows how.
Catching a broken integration
If a website’s contact-form notifications suddenly stop, the statistics show whether the site stopped sending or the messages started bouncing.
Cleaning up addresses
Hard bounces reveal addresses that no longer exist. Old ISP email addresses from Australian providers that have closed or changed their mail services are a common source. Remove them to protect your sender reputation.
Spotting deliverability issues
If one mail provider starts deferring or rejecting your messages, the bounce reasons usually tell you why: missing authentication, a content problem or a reputation issue.
Reading bounce reasons
- “User unknown” or “mailbox not found”: a hard bounce; remove the address.
- “Mailbox full”: a soft bounce; retry, but remove the address if it keeps happening.
- “SPF” or “DKIM” failures: fix your DNS records.
- “Rate limited” or “try again later”: the receiving server is throttling; common during peak periods such as Black Friday and Christmas.
Setting up a routine
Check the SMTP dashboard weekly, and daily during busy periods such as EOFY and the lead-up to Christmas. Export hard bounces monthly and remove them from the source system, whether that is your accounting package, CRM or online store, so the same dead addresses aren’t sent to again next month.
Statistics, privacy and retention
SMTP logs contain email addresses and subject lines, which are personal information under the Privacy Act 1988 for businesses it covers. Decide how long you need them, restrict access to staff who need it, and know where they are stored. Mailpro keeps all logs in Switzerland on private infrastructure, outside US jurisdiction, and never sells or rents data.
If your SMTP traffic includes marketing, the Spam Act 2003 also applies. A rising unsubscribe or complaint rate in the statistics is an early warning that commercial content is reaching people who didn’t expect it.
Getting started
Set up Mailpro’s SMTP server, send a test message and watch it appear in the log. If you’re new to the technology, read what is SMTP first, or compare with email API statistics if you’re using both.