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Delivery and failure – GOV.UK Notify
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    <h1 id="messagedeliveryandfailure" class="heading-large">Delivery and failure</h1>

    <p>Our delivery states are:</p>

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      <li><a href="#sending">Sending</a></li>
      <li><a href="#delivered">Delivered</a></li>
      <li><a href="#permanent-failure">Permanently failed</a></li>
      <li><a href="#temporary-failure">Temporarily failed</a></li>
      <li><a href="#technical-failure">Technical failure</a></li>
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    <p>Our delivery states are the same for both email and text message.</p>

    <h2 id="sending" class="heading-medium">Sending</h2>

    <p>All new messages start with the state ‘Sending’.</p>

    <p>This means that we have accepted the message, the message is waiting in a queue to be sent to our email or text message delivery partners.</p>

    <h2 id="delivered" class="heading-medium">Delivered</h2>

    <p>This means the message is in the person’s email inbox or on their phone.</p>

    <p>We can’t tell you if they’ve read it – to do so would require invasive and unreliable tracking techniques.</p>

    <h2 id="permanent-failure" class="heading-medium">Permanently failed</h2>

    <p>This means the email address or mobile number doesn’t exist or is blacklisted – also known as a ‘hard bounce’.</p>

    <p>You’re still billed for these text messages.</p>

    <p><strong>You need to remove this email address or mobile number from your database.</strong></p>

    <h2 id="temporary-failure" class="heading-medium">Temporarily failed</h2>

    <p>This means the email address or mobile number was full, or the mobile phone was switched off – also known as a ‘soft bounce’.</p>

    <p>We mark messages as ‘Temporarily failed’.</p>

    <p>You’re still billed for these messages.</p>

    <p><strong>You can choose to retry this message later or not.</strong></p>

    <h2 id="technical-failure" class="heading-medium">Technical failure</h2>

    <p>This means there is a problem with the connection between Notify and our email or text message delivery partners.</p>

    <p>Messages still being retried are marked as ’Sending’. We mark messages as ‘Technical failure’ once we’ve given up.</p>

    <p>You won’t be billed for these messages.</p>

    <p><strong>You need to retry this message yourself later.</strong></p>

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