# What is Soft Bounce?

What is Soft Bounce? A temporary email rejection (full inbox, server unavailable). Can be retried. A single soft bounce isn't a problem.

## How it works in practice

A single soft bounce isn't a problem. Repeated soft bounces to the same address effectively act like a hard bounce.

## Related metrics

- Hard Bounce — more severe
- Deliverability — a high soft bounce rate can indicate a problem
- Email List Health — a health metric
- Suppression List — addresses to skip

## Common misconception

'A temporary soft bounce isn't a problem.' An address with 5 consecutive soft bounces isn't active. Continuing to send hurts your sender score.

## How to fix it

High? (1) check email size — over 100KB causes issues, (2) check a blacklist at MXToolbox.com, (3) send to a small list first.

## Real-world example

A newsletter with 8 HD images had a 12% soft bounce rate. Compressing images to 200KB dropped it to 1.8%.

## Where to start

Track monthly bounce rate. Hard under 0.5%, soft under 2%.

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Category: Analytics · From the [Jimmy OS KPI Glossary](https://jimmy-os.com/glossary/kpi.md) · Source page: https://jimmy-os.com/glossary/kpi/soft-bounce