FAQ
What's the difference between a hard bounce and a soft bounce?
Hard bounces are permanent refusals and end as Bounced. Soft bounces are temporary, show as Attempted and are retried for about 21 hours.
Both terms describe a receiving server refusing your email. The difference is whether the refusal is permanent, and that decides what Emailit does next.
Symptoms
You see emails with the status Bounced or Attempted in Email APIEmails and want to know whether to act, wait or remove the address.
Cause
| Hard bounce | Soft bounce | |
|---|---|---|
| What the server said | A permanent 5xx reply, such as 550 5.1.1 User unknown |
A temporary 4xx reply, such as 421 Try again later, or no answer |
| Typical reasons | The address or domain doesn’t exist, the mailbox is disabled, or the server blocked the message | Greylisting, provider throttling, a temporarily unavailable server |
| Status in Emailit | Bounced | Attempted while retrying |
| What Emailit does | Stops immediately | Retries up to 7 times over about 21 hours |
| Webhook event | email.bounced |
email.attempted |
A few things blur the line:
- Some
4xxreplies count as hard bounces. Messages such as “mailbox full” or “account disabled” are treated as permanent, because retrying won’t help. - A soft bounce can become a hard bounce. If all 7 attempts fail, the email is marked Bounced and the address is suppressed with the reason
too many soft fails. - Late bounces. Some servers accept the message and send a bounce report later. Emailit matches the report to the original email, marks it Bounced and suppresses the address.
Hard bounces affect your reputation. Emailit tracks your bounce rate as part of sending health. Above 4% the workspace is At risk, at 5% a domain can be paused, and at 6% the workspace can be suspended.
Fix
-
For a soft bounce, wait. Emailit retries on its own. Don’t resend, or you’ll create a duplicate.
-
For a hard bounce, read the reply. Open the email and check the Deliveries tab. Look up the code in SMTP reply codes or the category in bounce categories.
-
Remove invalid addresses at the source. Delete or flag the address in your own database. Emailit’s suppression list protects you only inside Emailit.
-
Investigate policy blocks. A
5.7.xreply usually means the receiving server rejected the message for authentication or reputation reasons, not because the address is wrong. Check your DNS records and read Why are my emails going to spam?. -
Verify lists before sending. Run imported or old lists through email verification to remove bad addresses before they bounce.
Learn more in Bounces and complaints and What does the Attempted status mean?.
Still stuck?
Contact support or ask in Discord if your bounce rate rises suddenly and you can’t find the cause.