Hard bounce

An hard bounce is a permanent error or issue that prevents an email from being delivered to the recipient’s inbox. It is impossible to deliver and will not be delivered under any circumstances. This is final, unlike soft bounces, which are temporary.

To minimize hard bounces, it is advisable to regularly review your contact list. This will help improve the deliverability of your email marketing campaigns.

1. When is a hard bounce triggered?

There are mainly three reasons why a hard bounce occurs:

• The recipient’s address doesn’t exist. This happens when the domain of the recipient’s email exists, but the server doesn’t recognize the specific email address as active. This usually happens when the first part of the email address is entered incorrectly.
• The domain doesn’t exist. In this case, the domain doesn’t exist, making it impossible to deliver any kind of message.
• The destination server, for some unspecified reason, blocks the delivery. This happens when the destination server blocks incoming emails according to its internal policies and doesn’t usually provide further information. The mail server administrator has full discretion to block and prevent email delivery if they deem it necessary, without providing any explanations.