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4.7.0: temporarily refused on policy grounds

By · Published

Soft bounceYour sending reputation

The error

451 4.7.0 Greylisted, please try again later

421 4.7.0 IP not in whitelist for RCPT domain, closing connection

What it means

The receiver is temporarily refusing your mail for policy reasons — most often rate limiting, greylisting, or a TLS requirement that was not met.

The receiver is refusing your mail because of how your sending IP or domain behaves, not because of this particular message.

Why it happens

Greylisting is the most common cause and the least alarming: the receiver deliberately refuses a first attempt from an unknown sender, because most spam software never retries. Legitimate mail arrives minutes later with no intervention.

How to fix it

  1. Let the queue retry; greylisting clears on the second attempt.
  2. Read the accompanying text — receivers put the actual reason there.
  3. If it persists, treat it as a reputation or TLS configuration problem rather than a transient one.

Related guides

  • Gmail 4.7.28: temporarily rate limited — Gmail has seen an unusual volume from your IP and is throttling it. This is temporary and the mail is not lost — your server should retry.
  • Yahoo TS errors: a temporary deferral — Yahoo returned a TS-prefixed error, which it documents as a temporary problem. Your server should retry automatically and the mail is not lost. Yahoo publishes TS as a family and does not define individual members, so the specific number does not carry a documented meaning.
  • 550 5.7.1: refused on policy grounds — The receiver refused to deliver the message for policy reasons. 5.7.1 is the most overloaded code in email — it covers authentication failures, relaying denials, blocklists, content rules and DMARC rejections.