# How to lower your bounce rate

Mailgun has thresholds in place that if exceeded will result in a domain
being temporarily disabled. These limits are in place to **protect your
email reputation** in case your system is compromised by a spammer or
someone in your organization makes a large mistake.

If you do not have a good reputation tied to your domain and IP address,
your email will not reach your recipients' inboxes.

The number one reason we see people get blocked is because they have a
**bad mailing list**. Most of these lists have bad email addresses and
include spam traps. ESPs are good at recognizing bad mailing lists.

You can check your [logs](https://app.mailgun.com/app/logs) to see
emails that are bouncing and check your [bounce
list](https://app.mailgun.com/app/suppressions) for emails that we have
stopped sending to as a result of bounces.

## Best practices for lowering bounce rates

1. If you think your application has been compromised, change your SMTP
credentials or API key through the [Mailgun control
panel](https://app.mailgun.com/app/dashboard).
2. Clean your mailing list of invalid email addresses.
3. Only send emails to recipients that have signed up to receive them.
4. Verify the email address is correct with a confirmation email (aka,
[confirmed opt-in](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opt-in_email)).
5. We recommend using our [Email Validation
API](https://documentation.mailgun.com/docs/validate/api-overview) at
the point of signup to reduce invalid email addresses.
6. **Don't** purchase your list or scrape websites for emails.


If your domain does get disabled, [contact
support](https://app.mailgun.com/app/support) after you have made the
recommended changes above so we can re-enable your domain.