Trace email delivery with cPanel Track Delivery

Overview

Track Delivery gives you a report on the email that has left or reached your account. Use it to follow a message along its delivery route and to spot why something did not arrive.

Search

To narrow the Delivery Report table down to a single address, use the Recipient Email (optional) box:

1. Type the address into the Recipient Email (optional) box.
2. Click Run Report. The table now lists results for that recipient only, and the Email Address Trace diagram appears.

To bring back the full list:

1. Clear the Recipient Email (optional) box.
2. Click Run Report. The filter is dropped and every message is shown again.
   Note:

   The Email Server Trace diagram is not cleared by this action.

Two further options change which rows the Delivery Report table shows:

Delivery Report

Out of the box, the table shows the latest 250 messages going in and out of your account's mailboxes, successes and failures alike. These are the default columns:

Column	Description
Event	An icon showing the delivery status of the message.
From Address	The address on your system that the message was sent from.
Sender	The cPanel username of the person who sent it.
Sent Time	When the message was sent, shown in the timezone of your browser.
Spam Score	The score the message received from Apache SpamAssassin™.
Recipient	The address the message was sent to.
Result	A short text explaining how the delivery turned out.
Actions	The information icon () opens details of the message, such as sender, recipient and username, which you can also print.

How long records are kept depends on your hosting provider. It is set by the The interval, in days, to retain Exim stats in the database (Minimum: 1; Maximum: 365,000) option, found in the Stats and Logs section of WHM's Tweak Settings interface (WHM » Home » Server Configurations » Tweak Settings).

Event icons and troubleshooting

The icons in the Event column hint at delivery problems. Try the suggested action for each one, and contact your hosting provider if that does not solve it.

Event Icon	Description	Possible reason	Recommended action
	The message was delivered.	N/A	N/A
	The status of the message is not known, or it is still being delivered.	The receiving server could be responding slowly.	Look in the Result column for timeout or connection errors.
	Delivery was postponed; the system will make another attempt.	The receiving server might be unreachable.	Look in the Result column for timeout errors.
	Delivering the message resulted in an error.	The recipient's domain might not exist.	Make sure the email address is spelled correctly.
	A copy of the message was archived.	Archiving is turned on, by you or by your hosting provider.	See the Archive documentation.
	The message was refused and dropped while the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) connection was still open.	The sending server may be insecurely configured or listed on a blacklist.	Look up the server's IP address in the Real-time Blackhole List (RBL).
	The mail server took the message but did not put it in the recipient's inbox.	Spam software or the recipient's own email filters may have caught it.	Look for the message in the recipient's spam folder.

Delivery Report table options

The following settings let you refine what the table displays.

Record selection

To choose which records are listed:

1. Tick the checkboxes for the kinds of records you want:
   • Show Successes
   • Show Deferred
   • Show Failures
   • Show In-Progress
2. Pick the highest number of results to list from the Max Results/Type menu.

Column selection

Click the table options icon () to show or hide columns of the Delivery Report table. In the window that opens, tick or untick the checkbox of each column header from this list:

Header	Description
Select All	Ticks every available option at once.
Event	An icon showing the delivery status of the message.
User	The sender's cPanel username.
Domain	The domain of the sender.
From Address	The address on your system that the message was sent from.
Sender	The sender's cPanel email address.
Sent Time	When the message was sent, shown in the timezone of your browser.
Sender Host	The IP address of the sender's host.
Sender IP Address	The IP address of the sender.
Authentication	The kind of SMTP authentication used.
Spam Score	The score the email received from Apache SpamAssassin.
Recipient	The address the message was sent to.
Delivery User	The cPanel username that owns the recipient address.
Delivery Domain	The recipient's domain.
Delivered To	The recipient's email address.
Router	The internal router that dealt with delivering the message.
Transport	The type of SMTP method used for the recipient.
Out Time	When the intended recipient got the message, shown in the timezone of your browser.
ID	The identifier of the outgoing message.
Delivery Host	The hostname of the recipient's mail exchanger.
Delivery IP Address	The IP address of the recipient's mail exchanger.
Size	How big the outgoing message is, in bytes.
Result	A short text explaining how the delivery turned out.
Actions	Shows the information icon (), which opens details of a message that you can print.

Email Address Trace

The diagram follows the path a message to the chosen address took, or would take, through the local system's routing.

Every icon in the diagram describes one stage of that path:

Icon	Description
	The message went to a local inbox.
	The message went to a mailbox on a remote server.
	The message was put off for later.
	The message was refused.
	An error occurred while delivering the message.
	The message was received by the system.
	The message was thrown away.