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Email bounces are more than an inconvenience. Left unchecked, they damage your domain reputation and can get your business emails blocked entirely.
Permanent delivery failure. The email can never be delivered to this address.
Action: Remove these addresses from your contact list immediately.
Temporary delivery failure. The email might be delivered if you try again later.
Action: Retry delivery. If it soft bounces 3+ times, treat it as a hard bounce.
The most common cause. Typos in the address ([email protected]), old addresses from employees who left, or addresses that were never real. Solution: verify addresses before adding to your contact list and clean your lists regularly.
If your sending IP or domain is on a spam blacklist (DNSBL), many servers will reject your emails outright. This happens when your account is compromised and sends spam, or when you share an IP with a spammer on shared hosting.
Without proper email authentication, receiving servers cannot verify you are who you claim to be. Many servers now reject or bounce emails that fail SPF/DKIM checks entirely. This is the most fixable cause.
Incorrect MX records, missing reverse DNS (PTR record), or recently changed DNS that has not fully propagated. If you recently switched email providers, your DNS records may be pointing to the wrong server.
Some organizations have strict email policies that reject messages from unknown senders, new domains, or domains without a sending history. Government and financial institutions are particularly strict.
Every domain and IP has a reputation score. High bounce rates, spam complaints, and sending to invalid addresses all lower your score. Once your reputation drops, even legitimate emails start bouncing.
Email providers like Google and Microsoft track your domain's bounce rate. Here's what happens at different levels:
Normal operations. No action needed.
Clean your email lists and verify addresses. Fix authentication issues.
Your reputation is actively dropping. Emails may start landing in spam.
Major providers may block your domain entirely. Immediate action required.
Our free email security assessment checks your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC configuration and identifies issues that cause bounces.
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