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I'm sure this must exist, but I can't find anything anywhere that does this. What I want is some online service that provides an email address I can send an email to, and guarantee that it will always bounce.

The reason I want this is to test the bounce-handling functionality of a piece of software. Obviously I can use some kind of valid address that I know doesn't exist, but that doesn't seem like good practice, even though this is only for a one-off test, not something that will be automated (at least not yet).

Ideally, I'm looking for something like Mailinator, but where I can send messages, see them pending, and choose whether to bounce them, and what type of bounce.

Google did turn up this address bounce-test@service.socketlabs.com, but as far as I can tell, it's no longer bouncing messages, because when I try it I'm not getting anything back.

Any suggestions?

EDIT As per John's post below, the service seems to be working again - tested on 30th September 2016 from Gmail, and got a bounce response within 5 minutes.

DaveyDaveDave
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6 Answers6

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We have a bounce test email which we recommend to our customers and anyone is free to use it.

It just replies back:

:fail: No such person at this address.

The email is: bouncetest@tribulant.com

We have it listed in our documentation for our newsletter plugin for WordPress: http://tribulant.com/docs/wordpress-mailing-list-plugin/382#doc1

Hopefully someone will find this useful since there doesn't seem to be any easy way of testing bounces like this specifically.

contrid
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    That's great - my specific need for this passed years ago, but it's the first answer that's actually worked, so hopefully it will be useful for someone else! :) – DaveyDaveDave Sep 14 '16 at 22:02
  • This is still working as of today. It also bounces within a ~minute using the `bouncetest+whatever@tribulant.com` pattern. – Micah Elliott Jul 28 '23 at 17:38
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I use bounce@simulator.amazonses.com for AWS SES.

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/mailbox-simulator.html

From the above page:

"You can only access the mailbox simulator by using Amazon SES. You cannot access it from an external mail server."

mit
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seferov
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It's worth noting that bounce@gmail.com bounces, with a 'no such user'. To verify (even though the likelyhood was low), I attempted to create an account in gmail as bounce@gmail.com, and it failed stating it was already taken. So clearly google has reserved the address, and the only use it could possibly have is to generate bounces.

Even though - as of 07mar2019 - the bouncetest@tribulant.com still works, bounce@gmail.com is also a fair alternative.

Curiously, bouncetest@gmail.com....gets delivered. Whether there's a human on the other end is a question yet to be answered...

anastrophe
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I work over at SocketLabs. First, I apologize that we are seeing this message so late. I just wanted to stop in and provide some follow-up on this issue for anyone who is still interested.

The SocketLabs bounce email address is working. I tested it on Friday, September 23, 2016 and successfully received a bounced message.

The address is bounce-test@service.socketlabs.com

I would suggest trying again. Or contacting support. Our support team is very responsive and friendly. Here's a link to reach the support staff. https://support.socketlabs.com/

John
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  • I just got a "delivery" event when sending to this email through SparkPost. Highly suspicious whether this is actually working. – cen Jan 09 '17 at 16:10
  • If you send an email to this address, you will see that it does indeed return a bounce (NDR). I am not sure how SparkPost treats asynchronous bounces. A message that generates an asynchronous bounce is usually “delivered” but then a new bounce (NDR) message is sent to the return path of that message. So in the case of asynchronous bounces it is typical to get a “delivered” and then a “bounced” event. – John Jan 11 '17 at 17:07
  • It is possible that I got a bounce event after the delivery one. Will double check, thanks. – cen Jan 16 '17 at 20:32
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    @John Is this still working? I got a OK response instead of it getting bounced. – Bat_Programmer Aug 14 '17 at 04:39
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http://www.socketlabs.com/blog/bounce-and-feedback-loop-test-addresses/

bounce-test@service.socketlabs.com

user2883213
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Since the Socketlabs service is no longer active and the SES simulator is only for sending from local SES accounts, I ended up having to use my own domains hosted at either Google Apps or cheap shared (CPanel) hosting:

  1. For soft bounces, set up an email account and set it to suspended.
  2. For hard bounces, send email to an invalid address (and make sure you don't have catch-all turned on)
LouD
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