Soft bounce
What is a soft bounce? Soft bounce
A soft bounce indicates a delivery issue, where the email could not be delivered to the recipient’s mail server due to a temporary (non-permanent) problem.
Soft bounces are caused by a temporary problem, so once the problem has been resolved, the recipient will be able to receive the email normally and quickly.
Each email marketing provider handles soft bounces in its own way, but always based on the SMTP response from the destination server. It is common that if an email address keeps returning a soft bounce status after several email marketing campaigns in a row, it ends up being considered a hard bounce (a definitive bounce).
1. Hard bounce and soft bounce
Hard bounces are bounces that occur when an email can’t be delivered due to a definitive and permanent problem with the email address it was sent to. You can’t send to these addresses anymore.
Soft bounces, on the other hand, occur when an email can’t be delivered due to a temporary, non-permanent problem with the email address it was sent to. You can still send to these addresses, temporarily.
2. Reasons for a soft bounce
Although the most common cause of a soft bounce is that the recipient’s mailbox is full, there are many different reasons why our email may end up as a soft bounce. Some of the most common reasons for soft bounces are:
- The recipient’s mailbox is full, it has exceeded its allotted space quota.
- The destination mailbox is inactive or doesn’t exist on the server.
- The recipient’s mailbox is not configured correctly.
- The domain name doesn’t exist (the recipient’s domain).
- The recipient’s mail server is down/offline.
- The recipient’s email server has received too many emails for a period of time (time set by the server administrator).
- The email message is too large (due to sending attachments).
- The email message doesn’t comply with the anti-spam policies of the destination server.
- The email message doesn’t meet the destination server’s DMARC authentication requirements.
- The email message was blocked because of its content (destination server’s policies).