A bounced email is an email that never made it to the recipient's Inbox. It's the equivalent of getting a "return to sender" letter from the post office.
Why did you receive a bounceback message? When an email is sent, the mail server looks up the domain and username of the recipient and attempts to hand-off the email. If the recipient's server rejects the mail, the sender will receive a bounceback email. Here are a few of the most common reasons:
Soft Bounces (messages sent back after it was accepted by the recipient's server)
- The recipient's email server is experiencing technical difficulties (e.g. busy and cannot handle the request).
- The recipient's account is full and cannot receive new email.
- The recipient's email server is busy and cannot handle the request.
- The username portion of the email address was mispelled (e.g. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.). A bounceback saying "User does not exist" or something to that effect is typcially sent to the sender.
- The recipient's email server has a file size limit or does not accept certain types of file attachments attached to your email.
Hard Bounces (messages sent back without being accepted by the recipient's server)
- The domain portion of the email address was mistyped (e.g. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) which means no such server exists.
- The mail server is on a blacklist and the recipient's email server is rejecting email from us.
- This is fairly uncommon but you can check your hostname (domain name) at http://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx