A soft bounce is a temporary email delivery failure, often due to mailbox full or server issues. Learn soft bounce causes and what to do.
A soft bounce is a temporary delivery failure where the receiving server does not accept the email at that time but may accept it later. Common causes include a full mailbox, temporary server downtime, rate limits, or greylisting.
Soft bounces often resolve automatically as mail servers retry delivery. However, repeated soft bounces to the same addresses can indicate persistent problems or filtering behavior that deserves investigation.
To manage soft bounces, monitor patterns and segment problematic domains or recipients. Avoid aggressive resend behavior, keep sending volumes stable, and ensure your infrastructure and authentication are correctly configured to reduce transient delivery failures.