Soft vs hard bounce: handling rules, curated

Soft vs hard bounce: handling rules, curated
A frame: most senders treat bounces as one bucket and quietly torch their reputation. These sources separate them properly.

🚀 Deliverability
— Validity's bounce-classification guide — made the cut for the bright line: hard bounce, remove on first hit; no debate.
— SocketLabs soft-bounce thresholds — worth your time for a number you can act on: suppress after 3-5 consecutive soft bounces, not one.

🧪 Tests
— Mailbox-full vs greylisting breakdown — picked it because it explains why same-day retries on a soft bounce can look like an attack.

📥 Swipe
— Async-bounce trap note — earned a spot for the silent killer: accepted-then-bounced messages that never show in your open-rate math.

The lesson: hard = delete now, soft = patient retry with a cap. Conflate them and you spam dead boxes.
Saved you ~2 hours.