Docs

Delivery ops & retries

What happens after Send. Status lifecycle, retry policy, dead-letter handling.

Status lifecycle

StatusMeaning
QUEUEDAccepted by the platform, waiting for the worker.
PROCESSINGWorker handed the message to the provider.
SENTProvider acknowledged. For email, no bounce yet.
DELIVEREDProvider confirms it reached the recipient inbox / handset.
RETRYINGTransient error — back-off, then re-attempt.
FAILEDPermanent failure (hard bounce, opt-out, bad number).

Retry policy

Transient errors retry with exponential back-off: 30s, 2m, 10m, 1h, 6h (5 attempts total). After the 5th failure the row moves to the dead-letter queue and the platform stops trying.

  • Retries are free — they don't count against your message cap.
  • Permanent errors (hard bounce, invalid number) skip retry and go straight to FAILED.
  • You can re-trigger a failed delivery manually from the Delivery Ops page.

Dead-letter queue

ADMIN+ in your workspace see the DLQ via Delivery Ops → "Dead-lettered" tab. Each row carries the last error and the provider's response so you can fix the root cause (DNS, consent flag, template approval) before re-queuing.