A Follow Up Boss email bounces when the address or your sending domain rejects it. It stops at a daily cap when you have sent all your mailbox allows. The two look similar on a timeline and need different fixes. FUB allows up to 10,000 marketing emails a day per user once your custom domain is authenticated. Without authentication the ceiling is lower, about 250 a day from a personal Gmail, Yahoo or AOL address and 1,000 from Google Workspace (Follow Up Boss, Creating a Custom Email Domain).
Bounce or send limit? The one-minute check
Open the lead's timeline and read what Follow Up Boss actually reported. The wording tells you which problem you have.
| What you see | What it means | First move |
|---|---|---|
| The email turns orange and the lead gets the bounced tag. | A bounce. It can be soft (temporary) or hard (the address is invalid). | Hover the email address on the lead profile to read the error. |
| An action plan step says Failed to send. | The email never left. Common causes: no address on the lead when the plan started, an unsubscribe, a known-invalid address, a deleted template, or four action plan emails already sent that day. | Check the lead's earliest timeline event and the template. |
| This person has already received the maximum amount of automated emails today. | The per-person cap. Follow Up Boss sends at most four action plan emails to one person in a day. | Move the fifth step to the next day. |
| A batch email report shows more recipients than sent, or the status says failure. | Some addresses bounced or the send stopped at a cap. | Open Reporting > Batch Emails and read the Bounces column. |
| FUB says sent but the lead says it never arrived. | Delivered, then filtered to spam, or sent to an address they do not read. | Check spam placement, then simplify content and signature. |
| Nothing will send and your volume is near 150, 250, 500, 1,000 or 2,500. | You reached the daily cap for the mailbox connected to FUB. | Authenticate your custom domain to reach 10,000. |
Why Follow Up Boss emails bounce
Follow Up Boss sorts bounces into two kinds. A soft bounce means the address exists but the message did not reach the mail server. A hard bounce means the address does not exist or is invalid. FUB shows the same BOUNCED indicator for both, so the hover text is the only way to know which one you are dealing with.
Follow Up Boss lists these causes for a soft bounce:
- Your custom email domain is not authenticated.
- Your email address is not connected to Follow Up Boss.
- An email server was down, yours or the recipient's.
- DMARC or another email setting does not allow sending from a third party like FUB.
- The message contains media too large to display.
- The recipient's inbox is full.
- The recipient's settings do not allow email from the sender.
- The formatting is hard to read when it arrives.
- The signature has photos or formatting that are too large.
A hard bounce has one cause: the address is not valid. Stop emailing it. Call or text instead, and correct the record in Follow Up Boss so the next action plan skips it.
What the Follow Up Boss daily send limit actually is
Follow Up Boss counts batch email and action plan email as marketing email. Each user can send up to 10,000 marketing emails a day, and the real ceiling depends on the mailbox connected and whether your domain is authenticated.
| Mailbox connected to FUB | Marketing emails a day |
|---|---|
| Outlook.com, Hotmail, Live, MSN or Passport address | 150 |
| Personal Gmail, Yahoo or AOL address | 250 |
| iCloud address | 500 |
| Custom domain without authentication, Google Workspace | 1,000 |
| Custom domain without authentication, Microsoft 365 | 2,500 |
| Custom domain with authentication, any supported provider | 10,000 |
Three details matter when you are counting. One-to-one messages count against your mail provider's own limit, not the FUB marketing number, and Follow Up Boss lowers the marketing allowance when you are close to the provider's ceiling. FUB cannot see email you send outside Follow Up Boss, so a busy day in Gmail can make the next batch in FUB fail. And if you connect SendGrid, the sending limit applies to your whole team, not to each user.
The four-a-day action plan cap is separate from the daily total. It applies per person, so a large batch is fine as long as no single lead gets a fifth automated email that day.
The fix that raises the ceiling: authenticate your custom domain
Google, Microsoft and Yahoo tightened sender rules on February 1, 2024. Without an authenticated domain, mail sent on your behalf by a third-party tool is more likely to be rejected or filtered. Authentication also unlocks the 10,000-a-day marketing allowance.
- Open Admin > Email Domain Authentication in Follow Up Boss. This tab is available to the owner and admins.
- Claim your domain. FUB uses Entri to publish the DNS records. You will need the login for the account that manages your DNS, or use the option to forward the login link to whoever does.
- Wait for verification. FUB checks hourly and usually confirms within 24 hours. You can keep sending while the status says pending.
Domain authentication is what lets FUB send batch and action plan email through its own SendGrid account on your behalf. Recipient providers can then see that the message is not spoofed. If you cannot authenticate, FUB falls back to your connected mailbox, which means lower caps and weaker deliverability.
Use a mailbox FUB supports. Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 Business and personal Gmail are supported. Personal Outlook.com, Hotmail, Live and MSN are not supported for email integration. FUB lists GoDaddy, Rackspace, Yahoo, AOL and major cable or telecom addresses as not recommended (Connect Your Email: Supported Email Providers).
How to fix a bounce on one address
- Check the address. Correct the spelling first. A hard bounce will not clear with a retry.
- Read the error. Hover the address on the lead profile. It names the reason most of the time.
- Simplify the message. Run Follow Up Boss's Remove Format tool on the text, resize oversized pictures, and cut the signature down to plain text and one link.
- Resend after the fix. If the first attempt was plain text, try HTML email, or the reverse.
- Change the channel when the address is bad. Text or call the lead and note it in Follow Up Boss.
Some bounces never appear in FUB. Follow Up Boss reports a bounce from a Google-based connected mailbox when the destination domain does not exist, but a Yahoo address can reject the same message without FUB seeing the notice. If a lead says nothing arrived, treat the send as unconfirmed.
Delivered but not in the inbox
A message that lands in spam never reaches the inbox, which fails the same way from the lead's side as a bounce. Follow Up Boss names the usual causes: links that are not hyperlinked, a signature with too many images or links, all caps, repeated exclamation marks, spam-like phrases, and a poor ratio of images to text. A mismatch between your login email and your connected email causes trouble too.
Write the way a person writes to one person. Use merge fields, keep the formatting light, and send from the address the lead already knows.
If you need more than 10,000 emails a day
Follow Up Boss integrates with SendGrid and Mailchimp for batch sending above 10,000. SendGrid is the official batch provider; the free plan caps at 100 emails a day until you upgrade and authenticate the domain, and you only need one SendGrid account for the whole team. FUB's own help recommends batch tools for large sends and warns that the same authentication rules apply.
What this means for follow-up
An email cap slows a campaign. A hard bounce ends the email path for that lead. Either way, the next attempt has to be a call, a text, or a corrected address, and the record needs to show which one happened.
Nadia works inside Follow Up Boss. She reads the thread before she replies, qualifies the lead, and writes the stage, tags, tasks and notes back to the record, so the bounce, the next attempt and the outcome sit in one place. If you want an inside-sales agent working the leads that still have a valid address, see AI for Follow Up Boss or check pricing. Start free to watch her on your leads; sending starts on a paid plan.
Questions people ask
Does Follow Up Boss have a daily email limit?
Why did my Follow Up Boss email say failed to send?
Why does Follow Up Boss show BOUNCED for a soft bounce?
Will authenticating my domain stop every bounce?
Do one-to-one emails count toward the daily limit?
How many action plan emails can one lead get in a day?
Sources
- Follow Up Boss: Creating a Custom Email Domain — the daily marketing caps by mailbox and the 10,000 ceiling with authentication.
- Follow Up Boss: Email Bounces and Rejections — soft and hard bounces, causes and troubleshooting.
- Follow Up Boss: Batch Emailing Overview — the 10,000 per-user daily limit and the Batch Emails report.
- Follow Up Boss: Why did my action plan email fail to send — the four-a-day per-person cap and the other failure messages.
- Follow Up Boss: Authenticate your Custom Domain — the 2024 sender rules and the Entri steps.
- Follow Up Boss: Why Emails Go to Spam — content, links and signature causes.
- Follow Up Boss: Connect Your Email, Supported Email Providers — supported and unsupported mailboxes.
- Follow Up Boss: SendGrid Batch Email Provider — sending above 10,000 and the team-wide limit.
Follow Up Boss help pages read October 20, 2026. Limits and settings can change; check the linked page before you rely on a number.