Tracking Email Status

API users can track the status of emails sent via our API.

We rely on Amazon SES's event tracking to update the status of emails sent via our API. This means that the status of emails sent via our API may not be updated in real-time and, depending on the settings of the recipient's email provider, this event tracking may be skewed. As such, the accuracy of our email status tracking is not guaranteed. For more information, please refer to this page.

Email Status

You can get the status of each email sent sent using this API endpoint.

For CC and BCC recipients, email statuses are not tracked.

We currently do not support pushing webhooks to your server when the status of an email changes. We are exploring the possibility of providing more email analytics, such as monthly reports aggregating statistics about email deliverability grouped based on user-defined tags. For more information, see this section.

For a list of statuses supported by our API, please refer to the table below.

Status	Definition
UNSENT	Initial state of a newly created transactional email (this status is not returned in the course of a successful request to send an email)
ACCEPTED	Email has been accepted by our email provider (this status is returned in the course of a successful request to send an email)
SENT	The send request was successfully forwarded to our email provider and our email provider will attempt to deliver the message to the recipient’s mail server (API user can check this and all subsequent statuses via the /transactional/email/{emailId} endpoint)
BOUNCED	The recipient's mail server rejected the email
DELIVERED	The email provider has successfully delivered the email to the recipient's mail server
OPENED	The recipient received the message and opened it in their email client

Error Codes and Error Subtype

The errorCode and errorSubType fields in the JSON object returned by our API supplement the email status and provide additional information.

You can find a non-exhaustive list of error codes below.

Error code while sending emails

1. Invalid from address: the user has entered a from address that is neither their own (the email address used to log into Postman) nor <[e-mail]>.

2. From address has not been verified: the user should contact the Postman team to verify their from address.

3. Blacklisted recipient: the recipient's email address is on our blacklist. For more information, see this section.

Error code after an email has been sent

1. Hard bounce: the recipient's mail server permanently rejected the email (e.g. the recipient's email address does not exist).

2. Soft bounce: the recipient's mail server temporarily rejected the email (e.g. the recipient's mailbox is full).

3. Complaint: the recipient has marked the email as spam.

For the error codes above, you can find more information by checking the errorSubType field.

Tracking Open Rates

To track open rates of emails, a 1 pixel by 1 pixel transparent GIF image is inserted in each email sent through Amazon SES and includes a unique reference to this image file; when the image is downloaded, SES can tell exactly which message was opened and by whom. In general, the addition of this tracking pixel does not change the appearance of your email. However, for Intranet recipients, this tracking pixel might be blocked and show up as a red cross. Currently, we do not support opting out of this tracking pixel.

For more information, you can refer to this page.

Please note that for emails with CC and BCC recipients, the tracking pixel is not accurate as it will be triggered when any of the recipients open the email. This is an inherent limitation of the tracking pixel as the content of the email is identical for all recipients.