Details
A 'bounce' is determined when you send out a message to a recipient and the recipient’s server bounces the message back to us. There are two different types of bounces:
- Temporary (or soft bounce)
- Permanent (or hard bounce)
Temporary Bounce
Your contact would be flagged as a temporary bounce in instances where that message is unable to go through at this particular time. The most common cause of a temporary bounce is when the recipient’s inbox has reached maximum capacity.
Our system will attempt to re-send the message up to a maximum of 72 hours from the initial send. After this time, you may wish to re-try the send again manually.
Re-send a Message to Temporary Bounces
- Select Reports from the sidebar.
- Open the report in question by double-clicking on it.
- On the Overview tab, click Manage Bounces, as shown below.
- Click the (View Temporary) icon.
- Select all of the bounced emails.
- Click Resend email to Contacts from the Actions menu.
Permanently Bounced Contact
If your bounced contact is flagged as a permanently bounced contact, it means that the email address is no longer valid and no emails will be sent to the recipient. Some of the common causes of a hard bounce is that the domain no longer exists or that the mailbox has been disabled.
The system will automatically deactivate permanent bounces to save you from sending to this contact again. They will also be omitted from your list if you try to upload them again.
Remove Deactivated / Permanently Bounced Contacts
If a contact that you send to returns a permanent bounce, the system will automatically deactivate this contact for you. To maintain a clean list you may like to delete these types of contacts from your lists.
Remove Deactivated, Bounced or Unsubscribed Contacts
Managing Bounces
If you wish to view all bounces in your account, this can also be viewed directly in your contacts section (not just on the reports) by following these steps:
- Select Contacts from the sidebar.
- Select the Bounces tab.
- Select which message you wish to view the bounces for, and select View Bounced Detail from the Actions dropdown.
- This will display a breakdown of all temporary and permanent bounces from this send, as shown below.
- From here you can choose to re-send to the temporary bounced contacts or search and delete the deactivated contacts as per the steps provided above.
Bounce Codes
If you encounter bounced emails in your reports, you can usually see the reason why. This is supplied to us directly by the receiving email server and we simply display what they told us.
All bounce data should be considered accurate at the time the bounce was recorded. That said, from time to time there are going to be false positives. If you believe there is a false positive, we would recommend getting in contact directly with the recipient to follow up.
List of Bounce Codes & Reasons
| Status | Bounce type | Description | Explanation | Typical reasons | What you can do |
| 0 | Temporary | Unknown Error | The mail delivery system was unable to determine the cause of the error | ||
| 1 | Temporary | Other address status | Something about the email address specified in the message caused this error. | ||
| 1.1 | Permanent | No such Mailbox | The mailbox specified in the address does not exist. This usually means the address portion to the left of the @ sign is incorrect, or you have specified the wrong domain. | Incorrect Email Address | Check Email Address, deactivate contact |
| 1.2 | Permanent | Incorrect Domain | This usually means the address portion to the right of the @ is invalid. | Incorrect Email Address | Check Email Address, deactivate contact |
| 1.3 | Permanent | Bad Mailbox Syntax | The destination address was syntactically invalid. | Incorrect Email Address, Address contains bad characters. | Check Email Address, deactivate contact |
| 1.4 | Temporary | Destination mailbox address ambiguous | The mailbox address specified, matches one or more recipients on the destination system. | Problem with remote server configuration | Contact remote Mail Admin, or try resending |
| 1.6 | Permanent | Mailbox has moved | The email address provided was at one time valid, but mail is no longer being accepted for that address. | Email Address no longer valid - owner has left the company they used to work for etc, | Change Email Address |
| 1.7 | Temporary | Bad sender's mailbox address syntax | The sender's address was syntactically invalid. The destination server did not accept the senders email address as a valid email address. | From Address set against your email is incorrect/badly formatted | Change Email From Address |
| 1.8 | Temporary | Bad return address | The domain name specified in the senders email address does not exist, or is incapable of accepting return mail. This means the address portion to the right of the @ in your email address, is invalid for mail. | From Address set against your email has the wrong domain | Change Email From Address |
| 2 | Temporary | Unknown Mailbox Error | The mailbox exists, but something about the destination mailbox has caused an error. | Problem with remote server configuration | Contact remote Mail Admin, or try resending |
| 2.1 | Permanent | Mailbox disabled | The mailbox exists, but is not accepting messages. This may be a temporary problem, although the mailbox may never be re-enabled. | Mailbox is disabled - Owner may have switched companies | Check Email Address, deactivate contact |
| 2.2 | Temporary | Mailbox full | The destination mailbox is full because the user exceeded their storage quota. The recipient may be able to delete messages to make more space available. | Mailbox is full, user has not checked email for a while. | Try resending later, once mailbox owner has checked their email |
| 2.3 | Temporary | Message too big | A per-mailbox administrative message length limit has been exceeded. This status code should be used when the per-mailbox message length limit is less than the general system limit. This code should be used as a permanent failure. | Email too big | Check size of email/size of HTML |
| 2.4 | Temporary | Mailing list expansion problem | The mailbox is a mailing list address and the mailing list was unable to be expanded. | Problem with remote server configuration | Contact remote Mail Admin, or try resending |
| 3 | Temporary | Unknown Processing error | The email address appeared to be valid, but the destination system was unable to process the message. | Problem with remote server configuration | Contact remote Mail Admin, or try resending |
| 3.1 | Temporary | Mail system full | Mail system storage has been exceeded. The general semantics imply that the individual recipient may not be able to delete material to make room for additional messages. This is useful only as a persistent transient error. | Problem with remote server configuration | Contact remote Mail Admin, or try resending |
| 3.2 | Temporary | System not accepting network messages | The host on which the mailbox is resident is not accepting messages. Examples of such conditions include an immanent shutdown, excessive load, or system maintenance. | Problem with remote server configuration | Contact remote Mail Admin, or try resending |
| 3.3 | Temporary | System not capable of selected features | Selected features specified for the message are not supported by the destination system. This can occur in gateways when features from one domain cannot be mapped onto the supported feature in another. | Problem with remote server configuration | Contact remote Mail Admin, or try resending |
| 3.4 | Temporary | Message too big | The message sent was larger than the per-message size limit. | Email too big | Check size of email/size of HTML |
| 3.5 | Temporary | System incorrectly configured | The system is not configured in a manner which will permit it to accept this message. | Problem with remote server configuration | Contact remote Mail Admin, or try resending |
| 4 | Temporary | Undefined network status | Something went wrong with the networking. There is no more information available. | Problem with remote server configuration | Contact remote Mail Admin, or try resending |
| 4.1 | Permanent | Server too Busy | The email delivery attempt was not accepted, either because the remote server was busy, or otherwise unable to accept a message. | Can be caused by a number of factors, the result ofa volume of mail being sent to a particular host and/or a high number of invalid mailboxes sent to as part of the send. | Clean DB, try resend. |
| 4.2 | Temporary | Server Drop out | A connection to the users mail server was established, but was otherwise unable to complete the message transaction. This may be due to a time-out, or inadequate connection quality. | Remote server is overloaded or misconfigured. | Contact remote Mail Admin, or try resending |
| 4.3 | Temporary | Directory server failure | The network system was unable to forward the message, because a directory server was unavailable. This is useful only as a persistent transient error. | Problem with remote server configuration | Contact remote Mail Admin, or try resending |
| 4.4 | Temporary | Unable to route | The mail system was unable to determine the next hop for the message because the necessary routing information was unavailable from the directory server. | Remote server is unreachable/not connected to Internet. | Contact remote Mail Admin, or try resending |
| 4.5 | Temporary | Mail system congested | The mail system was unable to deliver the message because the mail system was congested. | Too much mail being delivered to remote server | Contact remote Mail Admin, or try resending |
| 4.6 | Temporary | Routing loop detected | A routing loop caused the message to be forwarded too many times, either because of incorrect routing tables or a user forwarding loop. | Problem with remote server configuration | Contact remote Mail Admin, or try resending |
| 4.7 | Temporary | Delivery time expired | The message was considered too old by the rejecting system, either because it remained on that host too long or because the time-to-live value specified by the sender of the message was exceeded. If possible, the code for the actual problem found when delivery was attempted should be returned rather than this code. This is useful only as a persistent transient error. | ||
| 5 | Temporary | Protocol Error | Something was wrong with the protocol necessary to deliver the message to the next hop and the problem cannot be well expressed with any of the other error codes. | Problem with remote server configuration | Contact remote Mail Admin, or try resending |
| 5.1 | Temporary | Invalid command | A mail transaction protocol command was issued which was either out of sequence or unsupported. This is useful only as a permanent error. | Problem with remote server configuration | Contact remote Mail Admin, or try resending |
| 5.2 | Temporary | Syntax error | A mail transaction protocol command was issued which could not be interpreted, either because the syntax was wrong or the command is unrecognized. This is useful only as a permanent error. | Problem with remote server configuration | Contact remote Mail Admin, or try resending |
| 5.3 | Temporary | Too many recipients | More recipients were specified for the message than could have been delivered by the protocol. This error should normally result in the segmentation of the message into two, the remainder of the recipients to be delivered on a subsequent delivery attempt. It is included in this list in the event that such segmentation is not possible. | ||
| 5.4 | Temporary | Invalid command arguments | A valid mail transaction protocol command was issued with invalid arguments, either because the arguments were out of range or represented unrecognized features | Problem with remote server configuration | Contact remote Mail Admin, or try resending |
| 5.5 | Temporary | Wrong protocol version | A protocol version mis-match existed which could not be automatically resolved by the communicating parties. | Problem with remote server configuration | Contact remote Mail Admin, or try resending |
| 6 | Temporary | Email Content Rejected | Something about the content of your message caused it to be considered undeliverable. | Spam Filter, Blacklist or Manual Restriction at Remote Server | Check your From Address/Name, Subject, Email Content and perform a Content Analysis. |
| 10 | Temporary | Content Filtered | The message has been flagged as spam by the recipient's system. | Spam Filter, Blacklist or Manual Restriction at Remote Server | Check your From Address/Name, Subject, Email Content and perform a Content Analysis. |
| 6.1 | Temporary | Media not supported | The media of the message is not supported by either the delivery protocol or the next system in the forwarding path. This is useful only as a permanent error. | Could indicate that remote server wont accept HTML or plain text emails | Try a different type of email |
| 6.2 | Temporary | Conversion required and prohibited | The content of the message must be converted before it can be delivered and such conversion is not permitted. Such prohibitions may be the expression of the sender in the message itself or the policy of the sending host. | Problem with remote server configuration | Contact remote Mail Admin, or try resending |
| 6.3 | Temporary | Conversion required but not supported | The message content must be converted to be forwarded but such conversion is not possible or is not practical by a host in the forwarding path. This condition may result when an ESMTP gateway supports 8bit transport but is not able to downgrade the message to 7 bit as required for the next hop. | Problem with remote server configuration | Contact remote Mail Admin, or try resending |
| 6.4 | Temporary | Conversion with loss performed | This is a warning sent to the sender when message delivery was successfully but when the delivery required a conversion in which some data was lost. This may also be a permanant error if the sender has indicated that conversion with loss is prohibited for the message. | Problem with remote server configuration | Contact remote Mail Admin, or try resending |
| 6.5 | Temporary | Conversion Failed | A conversion was required but was unsuccessful. This may be useful as a permanent or persistent temporary notification. | Problem with remote server configuration | Contact remote Mail Admin, or try resending |
| 7 | Temporary | Other or undefined security status | Something related to security caused the message to be returned, and the problem cannot be well expressed with any of the other provided detail codes. This status code may also be used when the condition cannot be further described because of security policies in force. | Could be the mail servers for these domains are filtering the emails, and in this case, not allowing them through. | Content analysis, request whitelisting |
| 7.1 | Temporary | Delivery not authorized | You were not authorized to send your mesage to the destination. This can be the result of per-host or per-recipient filtering. | Spam Filter, Blacklist or Manual Restriction at Remote Server | Check your From Address/Name, Subject, Email Content and perform a Content Analysis. |
| 7.2 | Temporary | Mailing list expansion prohibited | The sender is not authorized to send a message to the intended mailing list. This is useful only as a permanent error. | Problem with remote server configuration | Also, check email address |
| 7.3 | Temporary | Security conversion required but not possible | A conversion from one secure messaging protocol to another was required for delivery and such conversion was not possible. This is useful only as a permanent error. | Problem with remote server configuration | Contact remote Mail Admin, or try resending |
| 7.4 | Temporary | Security features not supported | A message contained security features such as secure authentication which could not be supported on the delivery protocol. This is useful only as a permanent error. | Problem with remote server configuration | Contact remote Mail Admin, or try resending |
| 7.5 | Temporary | Cryptographic failure | A transport system otherwise authorized to validate or decrypt a message in transport was unable to do so because necessary information such as key was not available or such information was invalid. | Problem with remote server configuration | Contact remote Mail Admin, or try resending |
| 7.6 | Temporary | Cryptographic algorithm not supported | A transport system otherwise authorized to validate or decrypt a message was unable to do so because the necessary algorithm was not supported. | Problem with remote server configuration | Contact remote Mail Admin, or try resending |
| 7.7 | Temporary | Message integrity failure | A transport system otherwise authorized to validate a message was unable to do so because the message was corrupted or altered. This may be useful as a permanent, transient persistent, or successful delivery code. | Problem with remote server configuration | Contact remote Mail Admin, or try resending |
| 0 | Temporary | No Error | This Email was delivered successfully. | ||
| 0.1 | Temporary | Acknowledged | This Email was confirmed as received. | ||
| 10.1 | Temporary | Delivery Restricted | The destination mail delivery system temporarily did not allow the message to be delivered, due to a restriction mechanism in place. This may be related to use of a specific From Address, a misconfiguration of your SPF record or evidence of a previous Spam Complaint. | Spam Filter, Blacklist or Manual Restriction at Remote Server | Check your From Address/Name, Subject, Email Content and perform a Content Analysis. |
| 10.3 | Permanent | Invalid domain | The specified domain is not a valid domain name. | Domain incorrect (not valid) | Check the recipients domain name. |
For a full and complete list of Bounce codes and reasons, please refer to the RFC available here: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3463
Locating the Bounce Code
- Select Reports from the sidebar.
- Open the report in question by double-clicking on it.
- On the Overview tab, click anywhere in the Bounced section, as shown below.
- Within the new window that opens, click Table Settings and select to show the Bounce Info field, click .
- Your bounce descriptions will now be shown.