Why did my email bounce back?

The return email that you receive will usually start with some technical information about the sender and the recipient of the email and some information about the mail servers at either end, but if you read down the email the reason for the failure is usually in there.

Some of the more common reasons for a failure and the steps you can take are listed below:


This means that the recipient's email account is full and they'll need to clear their account before they can receive any new emails.


This means that the address you've sent the email to doesn't exist. The most common cause for this is typos in the email address, or if you're emailing someone after a big gap, they may no longer have that email account.


You will normally see this error if there has been a temporary problem delivering your email, it usually means that the recipient's email system is too busy to accept incoming emails. This can happen if their system is undergoing maintenance or is having Internet connectivity issues.


This can happen if the recipients domain has been misconfigured or possible has even expired.


You will see this message if the recipient is checking specifically for SPF records (a way to help cut down on spam). If you receive this message, please ask whoever looks after your domain to add SPF records for you.


If you get this message back, it means that your email is considered spam and the recipient's system won't allow it in. This can happen if you regularly send a large amount of the same email to multiple recipients (mailshots etc). If you get this error, you will need to work with your email provider to remove the spam flag.

These are just a few of the most common reasons that your email might bounce back, along with some suggestions on how to fix the problem. If you receive an error back and you can't work out what it means, please get in touch and we'll help you resolve the issue.