Hard bounces vs Soft bounces

Modified on Thu, 7 Nov at 4:13 PM

Before you get started

Hard bounces 

A hard bounce is a permanent delivery failure. These emails are unlikely to ever reach the recipient's inbox due to one of the following reasons:

  1. Invalid Email Address - The email address doesn’t exist or is misspelled (e.g., [email protected] instead of [email protected]).
  2. Non-existent Domain - The domain in the email address does not exist (e.g., [email protected]).
  3. Blocked by the Recipient's Server - The recipient's server has blocked your domain permanently.
  4. Recipient's Email Policy Restrictions - The recipient’s server has restrictions that permanently prevent your email from being delivered.
  5. Spam Content Filter - Your email was flagged as spam by the recipient’s server and permanently rejected.
  6. Blacklisted IP Address or Domain - Your IP address or domain has been blacklisted by the recipient’s email provider.
  • Hard bounces are cleaned by our platform right away.

Soft bounces

A soft bounce is a temporary delivery failure. The email might be delivered later, but there was a temporary issue during the initial delivery attempt:

  1. Mailbox Full - The recipient's inbox has reached its storage limit.
  2. Temporary Server Issue - The recipient’s email server is temporarily down or overloaded.
  3. Message Size Exceeds Limit - The email is too large for the recipient’s inbox or server.
  4. Greylisting - The recipient’s server temporarily rejects unknown senders to filter out spam. If the sender is legitimate, the email might be accepted upon reattempt.
  5. Too Many Emails Sent at Once - The recipient’s server temporarily rejects your email if it detects an unusually high volume of incoming messages from your domain.
  6. DNS Issues - Temporary DNS (Domain Name System) issues that prevent delivery.
  7. Content Filters (Temporary) - The email content might trigger a filter, but it’s flagged as a temporary issue rather than a permanent rejection.
  • Our platform allows 7 soft bounces before ceasing to send messages to the contact.

Reviewing bounced email addresses

To see who hard bounced in your database, go to Audience Manager and apply the following Filter: Bounced email - then select the email(s):



Does Audience Republic manage hard bounces?
Yes. After you send an email, we track its delivery and remove bounced addresses from your Audience. Emails will no longer be sent to those addresses, but you will still be able to access them as needed.
Hard bounces can occur even for valid email addresses. If a bounced address has recently engaged with your emails, we won’t remove it from your audience right away. The bounce will be recorded in the recipient's profile and factored into their contact rating as we monitor future activity.



Still need help?

Contact us at [email protected] 


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