How to catch bounced emails in PHP?

Question

How to catch bounced emails in PHP?

12.4k Views Asked by Naveed Metlo At 10 April 2025 at 19:46

I want to save emails if it is bounced while sending email through PHP function mail() ? What is best way to catch that ?

Original Q&A

There are 2 best solutions below

superphonic On 08 January 2014 at 12:55

Add a bounce email address to the email header, and monitor that email account from PHP for bounces.

**Gadoma** · Accepted Answer

First you need to send email with mail() function with the use of additional headers. You point the return email address to a mailbox where you will gather the bounced emails. The below code is an example how to achieve that.

$recipient = "[email protected]";
$subject = "test subject";
$message = "test message";

$body = "<html>\r\n";
$body .= "<body style=\"font-family:Verdana, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size:12px; color:#666666;\">\r\n";
$body .= $message;
$body .= "</body>\r\n";
$body .= "</html>\r\n";

$headers  = "From: My site<[email protected]>\r\n";
$headers .= "Reply-To: [email protected]\r\n";
$headers .= "Return-Path: [email protected]\r\n";
$headers .= "X-Mailer: PHP\r\n";
$headers .= 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1' . "\r\n";

$result = mail($recipient, $subject, $body, $headers); 

if($result)
{
    echo "email sent";
}
else
{
    echo "email send error";
}

SOURCE

Than you just check the inbox for bounced error emails. The below example code will connect to an imap inbox, fetch and print out all the emails it finds there. You can easily customise it to your needs.

/* connect to server */
$hostname = '{example.com:143}INBOX';
$username = '[email protected]';
$password = 'password';

/* try to connect */
$inbox = imap_open($hostname,$username,$password) or die('Cannot connect to mailbox: ' . imap_last_error());

/* grab emails */
$emails = imap_search($inbox,'ALL');


/* if emails are returned, cycle through each... */
if($emails) {

  /* begin output var */
  $output = '';

  /* put the newest emails on top */
  rsort($emails);

  /* for every email... */
  foreach($emails as $email_number) {

    /* get information specific to this email */
    $overview = imap_fetch_overview($inbox,$email_number,0);
    $message = imap_fetchbody($inbox,$email_number,1.2);

    /* output the email header information */
    $output.= '<div '.($overview[0]->seen ? 'read' : 'unread').'">';
    $output.= '<span>'.$overview[0]->subject.'</span> ';
    $output.= '<span>'.$overview[0]->from.'</span>';
    $output.= '<span>'.$overview[0]->date.'</span>';
    $output.= '</div>';

    /* output the email body */
    $output.= '<div class="body">'.$message.'</div>';
  }

  echo $output;
}

/* close the connection */
imap_close($inbox);

SOURCE

How to catch bounced emails in PHP?

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