Hard bounces (bad addresses) should never be retried. Soft bounces (full mailbox, temporary fails) are classified by your ESP’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.

Who does this apply to?

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

In forceHygieneIn force 30 Apr 2026Verified 2 Aug 2026

Bounce suppression is platform-specific, not universal

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

Hard and soft bounce labels are interpretive classifications, not a shared industry standard. Klaviyo automatically suppresses after one classified hard bounce 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 ESP's number to another.

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

Global · Tool: Klaviyo · Mailchimp · Braze

How email works

In one sentence

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

Emailrules interpretation

(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 ( damage) or drops recoverable ones (lost revenue).

Dotted words open definitions. See how email actually works.

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. The exact wording, the enforcement record and every primary source sit under Proof & sources, 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.

Source fact

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 signal.

Sources

Klaviyo, Understanding bounced emails in Klaviyo
Published 13 Feb 2026Read primary source
Mailchimp, Soft vs. Hard Bounces
No publisher dateRead primary source
Braze, Hard bounce vs. soft bounce
Published 12 May 2025Read primary source

History of this page

2 Aug 2026Added from primary ESP documentation.

Take this with you

GET https://emailrules.today/rules/bounce-suppression-is-platform-specific?format=json

Same URL, same answer, every field including the ones behind the Proof tab. An Accept: application/json header on the plain URL does the same thing. All the endpoints.