emailrules.today
In forceHygieneIn force 30 Apr 2026

Bounce suppression is platform-specific, not universal

How many soft bounces before Klaviyo, Mailchimp, or Braze suppresses an address?

Global · Tool: Klaviyo · Mailchimp · Braze

In one sentence

There is no universal “ seven times” rule — Klaviyo, Mailchimp, and Braze each define bounce differently.

Plain English

(bad addresses) should never be retried. (full mailbox, temporary fails) are classified by your ’s own rules. Copying a blog’s “suppress after seven” will misstate at least one of your tools. Read your ESP’s bounce docs and align suppressions to that product.

Why it matters. Wrong suppression either hammers dead addresses (reputation damage) or drops recoverable ones (lost revenue).

Dotted words open definitions. Full glossary.

What to do

Your move — not a lecture

Part platform, part you

The platform covers the mechanical bit. The judgement is still yours.

The owns retries, hard-bounce suppression and the soft-bounce classifier for mail it sends.

Your part: Reading the bounce reasons, fixing list acquisition that produces permanent failures, and deciding whether your risk tolerance is tighter than the platform default.

What to do first

Open your 's bounce help article for the product you actually use, write the hard and soft rules on one line, and compare that line to the last 30 days of bounce rates. Do not use a competitor's number.

You can skip this if: You send no marketing email.

Who this applies to

Anyone sending marketing email through a modern , especially multi-brand teams that switched platforms or run more than one.

Checklist

  • 01Document the hard-bounce and soft-bounce policy for each you use. They will differ.
  • 02Treat Klaviyo's soft-bounce ordinal as an open question until Support or a controlled test resolves the page conflict between "more than 7" and "7".
  • 03Review "soft" bounces that look permanent (user unknown, invalid domain) before the platform's patience runs out.
  • 04If you migrate , re-map suppressions. The new tool does not inherit the old classifier.

That’s enough to act. Sources and exact wording are below for counsel, bosses, or AI tools that need a citation. Not legal advice.

Proof

Exact position, enforcement, sources

For records and people who will check you. Skip if Monday’s move is already clear.

The exact position

Hard and labels are interpretive classifications, not a shared industry standard. Klaviyo automatically suppresses after one classified and documents a multi-bounce soft path whose exact seventh-versus-eighth boundary is inconsistent on its own help page. Mailchimp documents allowing 7 soft bounces before conversion on some paths and up to 15 on others, and says it must guess. Braze treats hard bounces as permanent failures that suppress, while soft-bounced addresses can remain eligible for later campaigns. You cannot port one 's number to another.

What happens if you do not

No bounce-classification fine. Consequences are automated suppression, dropped sends, and account review when bounce rates stay high. Downstream, mailbox providers treat high rates as a reputation signal.

Sources

Related

History of this page

  • Added from primary ESP documentation.

FAQ

Awkward questions

Who is this actually for?

People who ship email and are too busy to re-read every PDF: week-one marketers, lifecycle/CRM, deliverability, multi-country ops, DTC brands, agencies — on Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Braze, HubSpot, SFMC, or something else. Pick your tool and geos so product-specific pages only appear when they match. EU and UK are first-class filters. Not for people who sell tools about email and need a fake score to demo.

Why only ~40 rules? Isn’t that… thin?

On purpose. A wall of 400 undated “best practices” is how you look busy and still get burned. Every page needs a primary source we actually read. Thin and checkable beats fat and folklore. Europe, bulk inbox rules, measurement honesty, and protocol topics like BIMI/DMARC policy are on the shelf when we can cite them — not every Member State and not every vendor myth. Coverage map lists what we still refuse to invent.

Is this legal advice?

No. If it were, you’d have a billable hour and a longer PDF. This is a dated operator reference written by an email geek. Confirm anything high-stakes with counsel who knows your facts. Same for “will this make me compliant?” — no tool does that. Lawyers and judges do. We say what the sources say and what to do first on Monday.

Why no trust score out of 100?

Because we refuse to invent a number you can’t audit. Fake scores sell seed tests and panic. You get findings, dates, and links. If that feels less exciting than a red dial, good — you’re not the red-dial customer.

Why should I trust you more than my ESP’s blog?

ESPs sell seats. Seed-score vendors sell fear. AI invents citations when nobody watches. We sell nothing today — no pixels, no placement scores, no affiliate — so we can say when a tool is the problem. A human verifies, dates, and corrects in public. Tools may help draft; they do not ship unsourced claims. Check the primary links. Fail that test and leave.

Do I need an account?

No. Filters live in this browser and the URL. Share the link. That’s it. Accounts come later only if they earn it — not so we can nurture you about email.

I’m an agency. Where’s multi-client mode?

We tried a client-name CRM on the setup card. It made the product feel like work before it felt useful. Role filters + copy link + one-page brief (optional PDF title) is enough for now. Complexity comes back when the free shelf is habit, not before.

Is the quiet changelog a bug?

No. Quiet means nothing material moved. We don’t invent urgency so the homepage looks “alive.” Sticky risks still show what usually needs a person when the market is still.