How bounces, unsubscribes, and complaints work
What happens when an email bounces, someone unsubscribes, or marks you as spam — and why those contacts are protected from future sends.
ThunkMail automatically manages the contacts you shouldn't email again, so you protect your sender reputation without manual cleanup.
Bounces
A bounce means an email couldn't be delivered.
- Hard bounce — the address is invalid or doesn't exist. We stop sending to it.
- Soft bounce — a temporary issue (full inbox, server down). We may retry, but repeated soft bounces are treated as undeliverable.
Bounced contacts are flagged and excluded from future campaigns automatically.
Unsubscribes
Every email includes a one-click unsubscribe link. When someone unsubscribes, they're immediately removed from future sends. This is legally required, and honoring it quickly keeps your reputation healthy.
Spam complaints
If a recipient clicks "mark as spam," that's a complaint. Complaints are the single biggest signal that hurts deliverability, so complained contacts are suppressed from all future sends right away.
You don't pay for unreachable contacts
Bounced and unsubscribed contacts don't count toward your plan's contact limit — you're never paying to store addresses you can't email.
Why this matters
Mailbox providers (Gmail, Outlook, etc.) watch how senders handle bounces and complaints. By suppressing these automatically, ThunkMail helps keep your future emails landing in the inbox instead of the spam folder.