Saleshandy Sequence Paused for Bounces: What Bounce Guard Does and How to Fix It

What Saleshandy's docs say

From Saleshandy's help center, read 8 November 2026:

• Why did my sequence get paused? A campaign can pause when "too many emails are getting bounced" or "multiple emails are bounced consecutively". You can "resume the paused campaign manually". It gives no exact threshold.
• Why are my emails getting bounced? "If an email account generates 5 consecutive block bounces, it will be automatically paused." If that account is the only one in the sequence, the sequence pauses too. "After 3 consecutive retries, a block bounce will be classified as a hard bounce."

Saleshandy's deliverability page describes Bounce Guard as auto-pausing sequences "on high bounces to protect domain", with an example alert reading "Sequence paused — 8.2% bounce rate detected". That's an example, not a published threshold.

Step 1: sort block bounces from hard bounces

Type	Saleshandy's definition	Typical text	Fix
Block bounce	Your sending provider won't let the account send	"blocked", "policy", "rate limit", "unauthenticated", "reputation"	Fix SPF, DKIM, DMARC; slow down; check blocklists
Hard bounce	The recipient address isn't correct	550 5.1.1, "user unknown", "no such user", "domain not found"	Remove the address; verify the rest of the list

A run of block bounces on one account is a sending problem. Verification won't stop it. Check the domain with the cold email domain checker and read why cold emails bounce. If the bounces are spread across accounts and mostly "user unknown", the list is the problem.

Step 2: clean the prospects that haven't been sent yet

1. Export the sequence's prospects. The Saleshandy prospects to email list tool pulls the email column out of the export.
2. Remove anyone who already bounced or replied, and dedupe with remove duplicate emails.
3. Upload the rest to the verify page for a live SMTP mailbox check. Each row comes back valid, risky or invalid with a reason.
4. Re-import only valid rows into the paused sequence (or a fresh one).
5. Put risky catch-all rows in a separate low-volume sequence. A catch-all server says yes to every address during a check and can bounce later, so these rows are the main source of bounces on lists that were "verified" elsewhere. SimpleVerifier reports them risky with a grade, never valid (catch-all scoring).
6. Put invalid rows on your Saleshandy blocklist or suppression list.

Saleshandy's help article puts it simply: "The only solution is to use a verified email list in your email campaigns to prevent such bounce emails." It also sells its own verification credits. Whichever checker you use, ask what it does with catch-alls before you trust the "verified" label.

Step 3: resume without tripping it again

• Toggle paused accounts back on. Saleshandy says there's no need to re-enter credentials.
• Resume the sequence and watch the first 100 to 200 sends.
• If bounces climb again in the catch-all sequence, stop that sequence, not the main one.
• Spread volume across more inboxes rather than pushing one account harder; see cold emails per day per inbox.

Your own stop line

Mailbox providers publish complaint limits, not bounce limits. Google's sender guidelines say to keep your Postmaster Tools spam rate below 0.1% and never reach 0.3%; Yahoo's best practices use 0.3% too. Most cold email tools that do publish bounce settings sit around 2% (Woodpecker's Bounce Shield defaults to it; see Woodpecker Bounce Shield). Use 2% hard bounces per sequence as your own pause point, whatever Bounce Guard does. The ESP bounce limit checker shows where a given rate sits against published limits.

What it costs to verify before every sequence

SimpleVerifier is billed monthly with no per-check credits on the bigger plans:

• Starter, $9 a month: 2,500 checks.
• Pro, $39 a month: Unlimited email verification.*
• Business, $99 a month: the first 300,000 checks a month at full speed, priority lane, 5 seats.
• Agency, $249 a month: the first 750,000 checks a month at full speed, 15 seats, client workspaces.

*Pro fair use: the first 100,000 checks a month at full speed, then slower, never cut off. See pricing. Check your list free: the first 100 checks need only a Google sign-in.

More reading: preparing a list for Reply.io, Woodpecker or Saleshandy, hard bounce vs soft bounce, restart sending after a block, and verify your list before cold email.