Glossary / Soft bounce
What is Soft bounce?
A soft bounce is an email that failed temporarily, like a full mailbox or a server that was down. Sending platforms usually retry on their own.
The receiving server said no for now, not forever. Common reasons: the mailbox is over quota, the message is too large, or the server was busy or briefly offline.
Most email platforms retry a soft bounce automatically for a day or two. Plenty of those messages get through on the second or third attempt without anyone doing anything.
The thing to watch is repetition. An address that soft bounces on every send is effectively dead, even though it never returned a permanent failure. Most platforms convert it to a hard bounce after enough tries, and you should let them.
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