Soft Bounce
A soft bounce is a temporary delivery failure, typically caused by a full inbox, an oversized message, or a server that is briefly unavailable, where the receiving server may accept the email if it is sent again later. Soft bounces do not necessarily indicate an invalid address.
Why it matters for outbound teams
Because soft bounces are temporary, most sending tools retry delivery a few times before giving up rather than removing the address outright. A pattern of repeated soft bounces to the same address, however, often signals a problem worth investigating, such as an inbox that is no longer actively used. Treating every soft bounce as a hard bounce risks removing valid contacts from a list unnecessarily.
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