Email Bounce Conditions
The following is a list of email bounce conditions. The Bounce Handling screen allows you to configure which of these conditions should be treated as a Hard Bounce, and which should be treated as a Soft Bounce.
If an email address encounters a single Hard Bounce condition, the Status ID for that email address is changed to "1350," and that address will no longer be eligible to be contacted.
When an email address first encounters a Soft Bounce condition, the platform doesn't automatically make that email address ineligible to be contacted. Instead, the system will allow you to continue deploying email messages to that recipient, until a specified number of soft bounce incidents occur, within a specified timeframe. If the email address surpasses that threshold, then the Status ID for that email address is changed to "1300," and that address will no longer be eligible to be contacted.
The "Default" column indicates the platform's default categorization for each bounce condition.
Condition |
ID |
Default |
Description |
bad-domain |
1300 |
Hard |
Message bounced due to invalid or non-existing domains, 5.X.X error. |
bad-mailbox |
1400 |
Hard |
Message rejected due to bad, invalid, or non-existent recipient addresses, 5.X.X error. |
cm-hard-bounce |
9001 |
Hard |
This category is not used and can be ignored. |
bad-configuration |
1100 |
Soft |
Message rejected due to configuration issues with remote host, 5.X.X error. |
bad-connection |
1200 |
Soft |
Message bounced due to bad connection issues with remote host, 4.X.X error. |
content-related |
1500 |
Soft * |
Message refused or blocked due to content related reasons, 5.X.X error. |
inactive-mailbox |
1600 |
Soft |
Message rejected due to expired, inactive, or disabled recipient addresses, 5.X.X error. |
message-expired |
1700 |
Soft |
Message bounced due to not being delivered before the bounce-after, 4.X.X error. |
no-answer-from-host |
1800 |
Soft |
Message bounced due to receiving no response from the remote host after connecting, 4.X.X or 5.X.X error (Note: this condition indicates that it's a valid server with a valid DNS entry, but the server isn’t responding.). |
other |
1900 |
Soft |
Message rejected due to other reasons, 4.X.X or 5.X.X error (Note: this is a catch-all for unrecognized bounce messages.). |
policy-related |
2000 |
Soft * |
Message refused or blocked due to general policy reasons, 5.X.X error (Note: This condition most often occurs in Business-to-Business scenarios when a server is configured with a policy that limits the number of connections per hour from one IP address, or something similar.). |
protocol-errors |
2100 |
Soft |
Message rejected due to SMTP protocol syntax or sequence errors, 5.X.X error. |
quota-issues |
2200 |
Soft |
Message rejected or blocked due to mailbox quota issues, 4.X.X or 5.X.X error (Note: This is the most common category for "mailbox full" issues.). |
relaying-issues |
2300 |
Soft |
Message refused or blocked due to remote mail server relaying issues, 5.X.X error. |
routing-errors |
2400 |
Soft |
Error message bounced due to mail routing issues for recipient domain, 5.X.X error. |
spam-related |
2500 |
Soft * |
Message refused or blocked due to spam related reasons, 5.X.X error. |
virus-related |
2600 |
Soft * |
Message refused or blocked due to virus related reasons, 5.X.X error. |
cm-soft-bounce |
9002 |
Soft |
This category is not used and can be ignored. |
* These conditions can optionally be categorized as a "Temporary Soft Bounce," which refers to conditions that are not related to the email address itself. If you choose to categorize these conditions as "Temporary," these conditions will not count toward the soft bounce threshold.