Bounce guard threshold

Purpose

Explains SuperSend’s automatic pause when invalid-recipient bounces run high, how to set the Bounce Guard Threshold (%) per campaign, and how domain-level bounce warnings / auto-blacklist work.

Prerequisites

• Access to the campaign’s Settings
• Understanding that this guard looks at invalid-recipient bounces (bad or unreachable addresses), not all bounces

Steps

1. Open the campaign.
2. Click Settings in the campaign navigation.
3. In the settings sidebar, select Campaign.
4. Find Bounce Guard Threshold (%).
5. Enter a whole-number percentage from 1 to 100 (default is 3).
6. Save your campaign changes as you normally do for this page.

SuperSend shows a warning if you set the threshold above 10% — raising it can hurt sender reputation if your list quality is poor.

Expected Result

• While the campaign is on, SuperSend monitors email sends after the bounce checkpoint. If the share of invalid-recipient bounces in the evaluation window exceeds your threshold, the campaign pauses automatically and a lifecycle reason reflects the bounce guard.
• The check starts once the campaign has sent more than 100 emails since the checkpoint. A smaller campaign is checked as soon as 10 invalid-recipient bounces have come back, so a bad list can't burn through dozens of hard bounces before the guard looks.
• The pause notice, Campaign Log, and notification list the top domains driving invalid-recipient bounces so you can clean the list.
• Each campaign stores its own threshold; there is no separate global override in the app.

Domain bounce concentration

Separately from the campaign-wide pause, SuperSend watches bounce concentration per recipient domain:

The checkpoint rule uses sends on/after the campaign bounce checkpoint, but only looks back at most 30 days. Older sends outside that window are not counted for domain auto-blacklist (hourly rules still catch short spikes). Campaign-wide bounce-guard pause still uses the full checkpoint window unless a high-volume rolling window applies.

Auto-blacklist is campaign-scoped (exact domain host only). It does not finish or delete contacts; future sends to that domain in this campaign are blocked.

Recover after a bounce pause

1. Open Campaign Log / notifications and note the top domains listed.
2. Remove or finish bad contacts, or add each exact bad domain under Settings → Blacklist (e.g. get.example.online — you can enter example.com or @example.com).
3. Turn the campaign on again. Starting the campaign resets the bounce monitoring window so the old rate no longer blocks sending.

Troubleshooting

• Issue: The campaign turned off on its own and I did not click pause.

Fix: Open Events or your notifications and check for an automatic pause tied to bounce rate. Review the top domains in the notice, clean those contacts, then re-enable. See also Email Validation in SuperSend.

• Issue: I want fewer automatic pauses.

Fix: You can raise Bounce Guard Threshold (%) only if you accept deliverability risk. Prefer verifying contacts and fixing list sources first. See Opt Out and Unsubscribe Settings for blacklist options that help protect future sends.

• Issue: A domain was auto-blacklisted but I still see contacts in the list.

Fix: Blacklist blocks sends; contacts may still appear in the campaign list. Remove them if you no longer want them in reporting.

Related articles

• Campaigns Overview
• Campaign Events and Statuses
• Email Validation in SuperSend
• Create and Use Suppression Lists
• Opt Out and Unsubscribe Settings

Updated on: 20/10/2026