Bounce/Spam Percentages and Ratings

Two important metrics that we use to rate the reputation of an SMTP2GO account are the Bounce Rate and Spam Rate.

Bounce Rate

The Bounce Rate shown on your dashboard is the percentage of emails that you have sent in the last 30 days that have bounced back. This figure includes both soft and hard bounces. A soft bounce could be due to an email being rejected by a recipient's mail server due to content it suspects is spam. A hard bounce is a permanent error, and could be due to a typo/mistake in the recipient's email address, or their email address no longer being valid.

You should aim to have a bounce rate below 8%. Anything higher usually indicates a problem with your mailing list: it could be out-of-date, or you may be trying to use a mailing list that isn't in accordance with our Terms of Service.

We grade bounce rates according to the following table:

Bounce Rate	Rating
0 to 8%	Good
8% to 12%	Fair (a little too high)
Above 12%	Poor (a lot too high)

Spam Rate

The Spam Rate figure shown on your dashboard is the percentage of emails that you have sent in the last 30 days that have been marked as spam by the recipients. A recipient can mark an email as spam by clicking the 'Spam' button in Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, and some other web-based email applications. 

Your spam rate should be below 0.10%, and if you send over 50,000 emails per month it should be below 0.05%. A high spam rate could mean that you are sending emails that your recipients don't want to receive. They also might be trying and failing to unsubscribe from your emails - you must ensure that your emails contain a working and prominent unsubscribe link when sending to a mailing list. Be sure to check our Terms of Service.

We grade spam rates according to the following table:

Spam Rate	Rating
0 to 0.06%	Good
0.06% to 0.10%	Fair (a little too high)
Above 0.10%	Poor (a lot too high)