Email Bounce Rate: Formula, Benchmark, and How to Lower It

Email Bounce Rate

Email bounce rate is the percentage of sent emails that could not be delivered and were returned, calculated as bounced emails divided by total sent times one hundred.

The formula and what's good

Bounce rate = (bounces / sent) x 100. Keep it under 2%. Above that, mailbox providers read it as a poorly maintained list and start filtering you. A sudden spike usually means a stale list, unverified addresses, or a purchased list. Compute yours with the email bounce rate calculator.

Hard vs soft

A hard bounce is permanent (bad address) and must never be retried. A soft bounce is temporary (full mailbox) and can be retried a few times. The distinction drives how you handle each, and the soft bounce vs hard bounce email page breaks it down.

How Nitrosend handles bounces

Bounce rate is tracked per domain, and every send is gated on that domain's health, so a rising rate throttles sending before reputation burns. Hard bounces are suppressed automatically, so a dead address doesn't get mailed again by mistake.

FAQ

What is email bounce rate?

The percentage of sent emails that couldn't be delivered and were returned, calculated as bounces divided by total sent times one hundred.

What is a good email bounce rate?

Under 2%. Higher rates signal a poorly maintained list to providers and start hurting deliverability.

What causes a high bounce rate?

A stale list, unverified addresses, or a purchased or scraped list full of dead addresses and spam traps.