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
Free email tools, no signup
Every tool runs entirely in your browser — nothing is sent, nothing is stored. The same diagnostics and planning I run for paying clients, simplified for you to run yourself.
Email authentication checker
Check any domain's SPF, DKIM and DMARC records — live DNS lookups, interpreted in plain English, with enforcement levels and the SPF lookup count explained.
DMARC report viewer
Upload the aggregate report your inbox provider sends you — get a plain-English read on who's sending as your domain, what's passing, and what's failing.
Preflight checklist
Ten checks to run before every campaign send — verified in minutes, before your sender reputation pays for the mistakes.
Email ROI calculator
Enter your numbers and see what your email programme is worth today — and what improving open rates and inbox placement would add.
Mautic vs ESP cost comparison
Managed Mautic against typical ESP pricing — find the subscriber count where the crossover happens.
SPF record generator
Build your SPF record sender by sender, with the ten-lookup budget visible as you add each include. No auto-includes, no surprises.
Prefer to have it done for you?
These tools answer the common questions. When the diagnosis needs a human — interpretation, judgment, remediation — that's the consultancy.
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.