Soft vs hard bounces
A hard bounce stops an address straight away. A soft bounce is temporary, and only stops an address once it keeps happening.
A bounce is an email that couldn’t be delivered. A hard bounce means it never can be, usually because the address or its domain doesn’t exist. A soft bounce means it couldn’t be delivered this time, perhaps because the mailbox is full or the server was briefly down. A hard bounce stops the address straight away. Soft bounces only do if they keep happening.
Hard bounces
One hard bounce marks the contact Cleaned and suppresses the address (blocks it), so it’s never emailed again.
If you send through EmailFig, the address is blocked across all of EmailFig, not only your account, and shows as Platform-wide when you look it up. Re-importing it won’t bring it back. If you send through your own Amazon SES, it’s blocked in your account only.
See Suppressions: why an address can’t be re-added.
Soft bounces
A single soft bounce changes nothing, and EmailFig keeps sending to the contact. If the same contact soft-bounces on three different emails within 30 days, they’re marked Cleaned and suppressed in your account.
Why it matters
Your hard bounce rate is one of the two numbers on the dashboard’s Sending health card. A high rate usually means the addresses are old or didn’t come from a real signup. See Read your dashboard and Why you shouldn’t send to purchased lists.
For what Cleaned means next to other statuses, see Contact statuses explained.