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Why Is My Subscriber Showing As Bounced?
Why Is My Subscriber Showing As Bounced?

Learn about why and where "Bounced" shows up in your account.

Updated over a week ago

Are you seeing subscribers show up in your account as bounced?

There are a number of reasons why a subscriber would show up as bounced in your account. Ultimately this means our mailing servers tried several times to send the email to their inbox without success.

A subscriber in the Bounced status indicates that we were unable to deliver emails to that subscriber.

You can find your bounced subscribers in your ConvertKit account here: https://app.convertkit.com/?status=bounced

There are two types of bounced emails: Hard Bounces (permanent) and Soft Bounces (temporary).

Hard Bounces

Hard bounces indicate permanent issues, such as the email address not existing (whether it was typed incorrectly or simply no longer exists). Subscribers with this type of bounce receive the 'Bounced' status and will no longer receive emails from you.

If a subscriber has a permanent bounce, you'll see that their status as Bounced in the subscriber profile:

Or you'll see Bounced when you are searching for a subscriber:

Soft Bounces

Soft bounces indicate a temporary issue, such as the subscriber’s inbox being full. We will keep the subscriber in a “Confirmed” status and attempt to send them future emails.

Which email caused the bounce?

You can see which email failed to send by going to the subscriber's profile and looking at their email history.

In their email history, next to the subject lines of emails, you'll see different colored circle indicators. The gold color represents an email that bounced.

Remember, when someone gets permanently bounced, they are unsubscribed. This is for your benefit so that your deliverability does not suffer. It will also help keep your open and click rates looking much better.

This means that if you see gold circles on an active subscriber, those were soft bounces, and not a good enough reason for us to unsubscribe them subscriber.

Can I un-bounce a subscriber?

In some cases, technical issues can cause emails to hard bounce when they shouldn't. If you’re unsure why an email bounced or think a bounced subscriber shouldn’t be marked that way, our support team can look into the reason and re-activate subscribers where appropriate.

Am I paying for bounced subscribers?

No way! Bounced subscribers do not count against your total subscribers or toward what you pay. You are only charged for active subscribers within your account.

In other words, no action needs to be taken with them. You don't need to worry about deleting them.

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