Keeping your sender reputation healthy depends on how you handle bounced emails. Sendy listens to Amazon SES notifications and applies a few clear rules to decide when to retry, when to stop, and how to keep your list metrics accurate.
When does Sendy flag email has bounced
Emails are flagged as bounced in 2 scenarios
1. Hard bounces
2. Soft bounce occurred more than 3 times.
How Sendy treats bounces
- Soft bumps get counted: temporary failures (like a full inbox) add 1 to a soft-bounce counter.
- Three strikes rule: at 3 soft bounces, Sendy stops emailing that address.
- Hard failures stop immediately: permanent bounces are suppressed right away with the time recorded.
- Vague transient noise is ignored: a generic transient signal is skipped so one-off blips don’t penalize anyone.
- Stats stay fresh: list data is refreshed and bounce details are logged, keeping dashboards accurate.
- SES simulator friendly: using Amazon’s bounce simulator confirms the bounce-handling loop is wired correctly.
Why this matters for deliverability
- Fewer retries to bad addresses keeps your sender reputation healthy.
- Automatic suppression reduces spam complaints and improves inbox placement.
- Clear rules (3 softs → stop; hard → stop now) make bounce handling predictable.
