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What are the bounce error categories and filters
What are the bounce error categories and filters

Learn about all statuses that can be generated by your bounced emails.

Support Team avatar
Written by Support Team
Updated over a week ago

If an email bounces, this means that there is likely a permanent or temporary reason the email could not be delivered. If not stated otherwise, Elastic Email system will work to send the email for up to 48 hours, however, if it cannot be delivered at that time, the email will register as "bounced". In most cases, contacts that have bounced an email can be sent to again (eg. in another campaign).

Clicking on a filter will return the log of emails that bounced in that category. An option to export will be available.

When an email is not successfully delivered by Elastic Email it will be grouped into one of the following categories. Below are descriptions of each category we currently support. Detailed bounce information is available for everyone.

Emails with 5xx bounce error code will not be retried, while any with 4xx error code are retried automatically.

Thanks to our Subsequent Bounces feature, a contact that bounces away 7 emails in a row will be turned into Invalid status. This will help automate your sending even more and help protect your sender reputation. You can read more about it in our article:

Suppressed

Either the email address has a blocked status on your account, the email was canceled or we were unable to deliver the email within 48 hours.  

No Mailbox

The email address does not appear to exist. Receiving this error will permanently turn this contact's status to invalid.

Account Problem

There is something wrong with the mailbox of the recipient, eg. the mailbox is full and cannot accept more emails. Most often this means that the email account is no longer being used. Elastic Email may automatically retry sending this email, depending on server's response.

DNS Problem

The domain part of the address does not exist. 

Poor reputation

The email bounced due to a poor reputation of the sending IP address. Purchasing a Private IP would alleviate a bounce of this type unless your mail is the cause. 

Spam

The email was rejected because it matched a profile the internet community has labeled as Spam. 

Throttled

The recipient server did not accept the email within 48 hours. Elastic Email will attempt to deliver an email for up to 48 hours. 

SPF Problem

The email was not delivered because there was an issue validating the SPF record for the domain of this email. Elastic Email requires you to validate your domain before it will send directly from that domain and not "on behalf" or "via" from our domain. If you are seeing this scenario, the likely cause is that your SPF record was once valid and has since become invalid and Elastic Email doesn't know about it. Emails in this category are rescheduled automatically.

Code Error

The email was not delivered because there was an issue with the email being sent by our system. Please notify our Customer Success Team if you are seeing these types of errors so we can investigate. Emails in this category are rescheduled automatically.

Time Out

The email was not delivered because a timeout occurred. Emails in this category are rescheduled automatically.

Connection Terminated

The status of the email is not known for sure because the recipient server terminated the connection without returning a message code or status. There is a chance the email was delivered but in most cases, it should be considered bounced. Emails in this category are not rescheduled because generally, the reason for this type of connection termination is the recipient server believes the email is spam. 

Connection Problem

The email was not delivered because of a connection problem. Emails in this category are rescheduled automatically.

Grey Listed

The email was not delivered because the recipient server has determined that this email has not been seen in the configuration provided (most often the combination of IP, From Email Address and Recipient Email Address - known as a "triplet") and has temporary rejected the email knowing that valid email will typically be retried. Emails in this category are rescheduled automatically.

Whitelisting Problem

The email was not delivered because the recipient server requires a whitelisting of this IP to receive the email from it. Please contact our Customer Success Team if you are seeing this type of error. Emails in this category are automatically rescheduled. Unknown Soft The email was not delivered because of an error that we have not categorized or seen. Please contact our Customer Success Team if you are not sure why you are seeing this message. Emails in this category are rescheduled automatically. 

Manual Cancel

The email was not delivered because it was canceled by an Elastic Email administrator or you canceled the email yourself from the Activity screen. Please contact our Customer Success Team if you are not sure why you are seeing this message. Emails in this category are not rescheduled. 

Not Delivered

The email was not delivered like because either:

  • the recipient/contact has a blocked status for either hard bouncing, being unsubscribed or complained,

  • the recipient/contact has opted into transactional only email on your unsubscribe and you are not passing the appropriate isTransactional = true parameter/header to the HTTP API/SMTP Relay,

  •  your email is failing a spam check,

  • you do not have enough credit to send,

  • you are sending attachments and do not have enough credit. Attachments require credit and cost $1/GB,

  • your mail was unable to be delivered within 48 hours due to throttling constraints on the destination servers. 

  • "Stale" contact

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