Mailchimp bounce and complaint limits
From Mailchimp's own help center and policies, checked November 1, 2026.
| Metric | Limit | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Bounce rate | No published number | Mailchimp reviews accounts with automated and human checks and can suspend, throttle or disable an account that looks suspicious. Source |
| Abuse complaints | No published number | A warning once complaints exceed Mailchimp's threshold; an automatic suspension when a single send exceeds industry thresholds. Source |
| New imports | Checked by Omnivore | Omnivore runs on every import and every send to new people. A warning blocks sending to that audience until the bad addresses are removed. Source |
How Mailchimp handles bounces and imports
- Hard bounces are cleaned from the audience automatically and immediately in most cases.
- Soft bounces are allowed 7 times for a contact with no subscriber activity, and up to 15 times for one with previous activity, before the contact is cleaned.
- Cleaned contacts do not count toward audience limits and cannot be edited.
- Purchased, rented, third-party, co-registration and publicly available lists are prohibited by Mailchimp's Acceptable Use Policy.
Clean your Mailchimp list with the integration
No exports. Results are written straight back to Mailchimp.
- 1
In RocketVerifier, open Dashboard, Integrations, Mailchimp and click Connect. Approve access in Mailchimp.
- 2
Choose the audience to verify. There is no size cap.
- 3
Turn on write-back: tag every member with its result and unsubscribe undeliverable addresses.
- 4
Preview the breakdown, then click Sync now, or set a schedule to re-verify the audience automatically.
- 5
Build your send segment from the result tags: deliverable plus catch-all send_safe.
Or clean it by file
- 1
In Mailchimp, go to Audience, choose the audience, then Export audience and Export CSV. Mailchimp emails you when the file is ready.
- 2
Upload the CSV to RocketVerifier as a bulk job. Free checks run on every row first, so you see an estimate before you are charged.
- 3
Download the cleaned file, or the full results with status, sub-status and score for each address.
- 4
Back in Mailchimp, go to Audience, Add contacts, Import contacts, Upload a file. Tick Update any existing contacts, tag the rows by result and complete the import. Unsubscribe or archive the addresses you are removing.
What to keep and what to remove
| Status | Sub-status | Action |
|---|---|---|
| deliverable | none, alias | Keep and send. |
| risky | catch_all, send_safe | Keep and send. |
| risky | catch_all, send_with_caution | Send to engaged contacts, or in smaller batches. |
| risky | role_based, mailbox_full | Keep only if they opted in and engage. |
| risky | catch_all avoid, possible_trap, toxic | Remove. |
| undeliverable | any | Unsubscribe or suppress. |
| unknown | greylisted, blocked, smtp_timeout | Hold and re-verify later. Never charged. |
Tips for Mailchimp
- Verify every new batch before you import it. That is exactly the check Omnivore runs, done first and with reasons attached.
- If Omnivore has already flagged an audience, segment the contacts added since your last good campaign, verify them and remove the bad ones.
- Archive or unsubscribe removed contacts rather than deleting them, so they are not re-imported later by accident.
Sources
- Mailchimp: About abuse complaints
- Mailchimp: Acceptable Use Policy
- Mailchimp: About Omnivore
- Mailchimp: Soft vs. hard bounces
- Mailchimp: View or export your contacts
- Mailchimp: Import contacts
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