About Bounces
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About Bounce Suspension
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If you’ve been directed to this page, your account may be suspended for having too many hard bounces. Internet service providers (ISPs) and anti-spam organizations require that we suspend accounts with high bounce rates to avoid any further issues while we investigate possible causes.
In this article, you’ll learn about bounces and account suspension.
Note
Beginning February 2024, Gmail and Yahoo will require a custom authentication and a published Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) record for anyone sending more than 5,000 emails to Gmail or Yahoo addresses in a 24-hour period. To prevent your emails from bouncing, we strongly recommend authenticating your email domain and configuring DMARC.
Also, if you use a free email service like Gmail or Yahoo for your From email address, we strongly recommend you switch to an email address from a private domain, like the one you use for work or for your website.
For more information about custom authentication and DMARC, check out About Email Domain Authentication.
What are bounces?
Bounces are emails that couldn't be delivered to an email address. When an email bounces, Mailchimp classifies it as either a soft or a hard bounce.
Hard bounces occur when an email address doesn't exist, or an unexpected error occurs during sending. Soft bounces are recognized by the recipient's email server but are returned to the sender for a variety of reasons. This could include the mailbox being full or delivery being temporarily unavailable to that service. Check out these articles to learn more about bounces and authentication.
About Bounces
Soft vs. Hard Bounces
Set Up Email Domain Authentication
View Bounce Reasons
Causes of High Bounce Rates
What causes an account suspension?
Account suspensions are automatic system actions triggered when a single send exceeds industry thresholds. We are required by ISPs and anti-spam organizations to enforce limits for bounces, unsubscribes, and abuse complaints. We’ll suspend an account that exceeds these limits in order to prevent any further issues while we investigate.
If your account is suspended, we'll send an email to the account's contact email address that explains the issue and asks some questions. Once you submit your answers, someone from our Compliance team will follow up with you to help speed up the investigation.
During an account suspension, sending is disabled but all other interactions with the application (logging in, API requests, accessing your data, etc.) should continue to work. We know you have a business to run and we don't want to hold you up. To learn more about suspensions, check out this article.
What should I do next?
If you haven't sent an email to your contacts in a while, reconfirm your audience to keep your contact information up to date. This should help protect your audience from spambots and fake signups that lead to bounces. To learn more about bounce warnings and reconfirming contacts, check out these articles.
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About Bounce Warnings
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Soft vs. Hard Bounces
When an email is rejected by an email server, it's called a bounce. Learn about the different types of bounces and how to abide by spam laws.