How do unsubscribes and suppression work?

NevarMail gives every recipient a working, one-click unsubscribe link and a preference center, automatically suppresses anyone who unsubscribes, bounces hard, or reports spam (instantly for Agent Inbox sends; within the 6-hour provider sync for API sends, templated sends and campaigns — see Bounces and suppressions), and never lets you send to a suppressed address again — but you're the sender of record on your own account, so decisions like what you send and to whom remain yours to make responsibly.

What is suppression?

A suppression is a permanent "do not send" record for one email address on your account (or, more narrowly, for one use case). NevarMail tracks four reasons an address can be suppressed: unsubscribe, hard_bounce, spam_complaint, and manual (added by you). Once an address is suppressed for a reason other than a plain unsubscribe, it's blocked from every use case — bounces and spam complaints aren't a preference to be scoped, they're a signal that the address shouldn't be mailed at all.

An unsubscribe can be scoped: if a recipient opts out of one use case (say, product updates) but stays subscribed to another (like order receipts), NevarMail respects that distinction wherever a use case supports it.

What does the unsubscribe link actually do?

Every message sent through a use case that supports unsubscribing includes a link to a public preference page (/unsubscribe/[token]) that needs no login — the signed token in the URL is the recipient's only credential, and it names exactly one organization and one address, so nothing on that page can read or change anyone else's preferences.

• A one-click unsubscribe (the kind a mail client can fire automatically, per RFC 8058) opts the recipient out of everything on your account. That's deliberate: an automated, no-UI unsubscribe request carries no information about which category the recipient meant, so the only safe reading of it is "all of it."
• Visiting the page directly gives the recipient a fuller choice: an unsubscribe-all, or picking which specific use cases (categories) they want to keep hearing from.

Does NevarMail import my existing unsubscribe list?

Yes. A background sync runs every 6 hours and pulls your provider's suppression lists — bounces, spam reports, and unsubscribes — into NevarMail, so a recipient who opted out on your provider's side (or before you connected NevarMail) is honored here too. It does not import provider-side blocks, since a block is a transient delivery issue, not a permanent signal that the address shouldn't be mailed.

Does NevarMail push my unsubscribes back to my provider?

Yes, for unsubscribes specifically. When someone unsubscribes through NevarMail, that opt-out is mirrored to your provider account so your provider's own sending also respects it, if you send through it directly for anything outside NevarMail. This sync is asynchronous — it's queued in the background and picked up by the same 6-hour cycle if the immediate attempt doesn't land — so treat NevarMail's suppression list as the source of truth for "did this take effect" rather than checking your provider account immediately after.

Can I check or manage suppressions myself?

Yes, in two ways:

• From your own systems: GET /api/v1/suppressions/check lets your integration ask "may I mail this address?" before sending — scoped to a specific use case if you want a transactional use case to ignore a category-level opt-out (bounces and spam complaints still block everything, regardless of scope).
• In bulk: POST /api/v1/suppressions lets you add suppressions in bulk (for example, importing a list from a system NevarMail doesn't sync automatically), and GET /api/v1/suppressions lists and filters your account's suppressions.
• On behalf of a recipient: if you capture an opt-out somewhere other than NevarMail's own preference page (a support ticket, a reply-to-unsubscribe email you handle yourself), GET/PUT /api/v1/preferences let you read and record that recipient's category choices programmatically.

What should I not rely on yet?

NevarMail's outbound event webhooks exist as a feature, but they don't dispatch real bounce, complaint, or unsubscribe events yet. Don't build a workflow that waits on a webhook to learn about a suppression — poll GET /api/v1/suppressions or use the pre-send check instead.

What does NevarMail handle for me, and what's still on me?

NevarMail handles automatically:

• Putting the unsubscribe footer and List-Unsubscribe headers on every email a recipient can opt out of — every marketing send, and every send under a suppressable use case, which includes each project's default use case. A send that names no use case therefore always carries the footer.
• Serving a working, tokenized unsubscribe and preference page for every recipient.
• Honoring one-click and preference-center opt-outs immediately, and never sending to a suppressed address again.
• Importing your provider's own bounce/complaint/unsubscribe history so NevarMail's list matches reality.
• Mirroring NevarMail-side unsubscribes back to your provider account.

Still your responsibility as the sender of record:

• Making sure the content you send is accurate, wanted, and not misleading — CAN-SPAM and GDPR are about what you send and why, not just whether an unsubscribe link exists.
• Honoring opt-outs you learn about outside NevarMail (a reply, a support request) — use the preferences API to record those so NevarMail's suppression list stays accurate.
• Legal compliance more broadly: this page describes what the product does, not legal advice. Consult your own counsel for what CAN-SPAM, GDPR, or other regimes require for your specific sends and audiences.

Related pages

• Test mode and safe send — why your first sends are restricted before any of this applies.
• Tracking — subscription tracking and the other tracking settings NevarMail can read from your provider.
• Your data and recipient data — what NevarMail stores about recipients overall.