Understanding suppressed email profiles
You will learn
Learn about suppressed email profiles, including how they differ from active profiles and how you can use these profiles to better understand your audience.
What is a suppressed profile?
When a profile is suppressed for email, they cannot receive marketing messages. A suppressed profile cannot receive marketing messages, even if they have provided consent and indicated they want to receive emails.
A person can become suppressed for the following reasons:
- An email hard bounced
A hard bounce occurs when an email cannot be delivered due to a permanent reason. This can be caused by a variety of reasons, including a misspelled email address or a deliberate block by the email server. A hard bounce signals a permanent email delivery issue, so Klaviyo will automatically suppress these profiles to help ensure your lists stay clean. - An email soft bounced more than 7 consecutive times
A soft bounce occurs when an email cannot be delivered due to a temporary reason. For example, a recipient's inbox may be full or the server may be down. If an email soft bounces more than 7 times in a row, it indicates that this is a consistent issue. To prevent continual soft bounces, Klaviyo will suppress email addresses that soft bounce more than 7 times consecutively. Only soft bounces within the past 2 years are considered for this count. - Spam complaint
The recipient previously marked an email message from this account as spam. - Manually suppressed
If you have uploaded a file of people to manually suppress them for email, they will appear on your suppression list with the reason User suppressed. - The person was suppressed in a previous email service provider
This type of suppression occurred prior to your use of Klaviyo and was synced from a third-party service provider, such as Mailchimp. In this case, the suppression reason will be listed as User suppressed.
When someone unsubscribes or marks an email as spam they will be unreachable, but these are not displayed as suppression reasons. Instead these profiles will always have an unsubscribed consent status. Profiles that are unsubscribed are unreachable through the channel and do not contribute towards billing plans.
Global vs. list suppressions
Based on your settings in Klaviyo, a profile can be globally suppressed from all lists on your accounts, or just be suppressed for specific lists.
Global suppressions
If you have Klaviyo's global unsubscribe feature enabled, which is highly recommended, profiles will become globally suppressed for email in your account after unsubscribing from any email. This means that when someone unsubscribes from email, they will be suppressed from any further email sends.
You can access a global unsubscribe link by navigating to Settings > Other and scrolling down to the Consent Settings section.
This is a recommended feature that is enabled on accounts by default, because when a customer unsubscribes from one of your emails, they expect to unsubscribe from all of your emails. If a customer continues to receive emails from you after unsubscribing, they will either ignore them, mark them as spam, or take more aggressive action. As a sender, all of these consequences can significantly harm your email deliverability.
Note that the total number of suppressed profiles on your Profiles tab represents all profiles that have been globally suppressed in your account. If you turn off the global suppressions and a customer unsubscribes from a particular list, they will not count as a suppressed profile on the Profiles tab. If someone unsubscribes from a non-list based send, they will be suppressed from all future emails.
List-specific suppressions
By default when a recipient unsubscribes from an email you send, they will be suppressed for all future emails.
If you have a paid Klaviyo plan, you can adjust this behavior on the account-level or for specific lists. When the global unsubscribe setting is disabled, those who unsubscribe from a list-based email send will only be suppressed from the list (or lists) that message was sent to, and may still receive emails sent to other lists they have subscribed to. This setting does not impact SMS or push consent.
List-suppressed profiles will not be included in the suppression condition in segmentation (i.e., If someone can or cannot receive marketing > cannot receive > email marketing > because person is suppressed) as profiles can still receive some emails.
To maintain strong deliverability and avoid recipients marking your emails as spam, Klaviyo highly recommends that you leave global unsubscribes enabled.
To disable global unsubscribes for a single list:
- Select your list from the Lists & Segments tab.
- Open that list’s settings.
- Uncheck the option When someone unsubscribes from [LIST NAME], unsubscribe that person from all future emails.
- Click Update List Settings.
To disable this setting for all lists:
- Navigate to Settings > Other.
- Scroll down to Unsubscribe Behavior.
- Uncheck the option When someone unsubscribes from a list, unsubscribe that person from all lists.
- Click Update Email Tracking Settings.
Viewing a profile’s suppression status
To see if a profile is suppressed for email, navigate to their profile.
On the Details tab, you'll see the different channels a profile can be reached through along with their suppression and consent status. You'll see the following statuses here:
- A green checkmark
This symbol indicates that the profile is able to receive marketing because they have subscribed for the corresponding channel and are not suppressed.
- A red indicator
This symbol indicates that the profile is unable to receive marketing through the channel and is suppressed. This may be because they were manually suppressed, or they had an email hard bounce.
- A yellow exclamation mark
A yellow exclamation mark indicates that the profile is able to receive email marketing, but has neither subscribed nor opted out. While they are able receive emails (e.g., an abandoned cart flow email) because they are not suppressed, you should exercise caution when contacting them.
For SMS and push notifications, profiles need to provide express consent in order to receive messages. Profiles with a status of Never subscribed for SMS and push notifications are not able to receive messages through the channel until they opt-in.
By expanding a channel, you can see information about when and how someone became subscribed and the reason the profile is suppressed. If the profile is suppressed for more than one reason (e.g., manually suppressed and also unsubscribed), only the highest-priority suppression reason will appear. Suppressions are prioritized as follows:
- Deliverability (i.e., hard bounce or invalid email)
- Manual (i.e., the profile was manually suppressed)
Navigating to your email suppression list
Global suppressions
To see the total number of profiles that are active versus suppressed for email, visit your Profiles tab and look at the values in the top left corner of the page.
Click Suppressed Profiles to view a list of all email suppressions.
Once you navigate to your email suppression list, you can:
- Filter by reason
- Export this list to a CSV
- Add an email address manually
- Upload a file of people you'd like to suppress
List suppressions
To see the profiles that are suppressed for a specific list, first navigate to your desired list. Under the Manage List menu in the top-right corner, you’ll see the List Suppressions option that will take you to the list’s suppressed users.
When a profile is manually suppressed for a list, the Manually Suppressed from "List name" Email Marketing event appear on the profile's activity log.
Note that with global suppressions enabled, profiles that become suppressed will not appear here.
How to suppress profiles
To suppress a single profile for email, navigate to Profiles > Suppressed Profiles and click Add Email Address.
Additionally, you can suppress a profile directly from the Details tab on a profile. By clicking on the menu next to the consent indicator, you can Suppress or Unsubscribe the profile.
Only the Owner, Admin, and Manager user roles can suppress profiles.
Suppressing a profile through these options will apply a User Suppressed suppression reason. Since manually suppressing a profile does not change their consent status, the profile’s consent status will remain Subscribed but they are now unable to receive email marketing.
When a profile is manually suppressed, the Manually Suppressed from Email Marketing event appear on the profile's activity log.
To learn how to suppress multiple profiles at once, head to our article on how to bulk delete or suppress contacts in Klaviyo.
Updating subscriptions and suppressions
To manually unsuppress a profile, navigate to their profile and select the Remove global suppression button under the suppressed channel. Alternatively, you can use the Unsuppress option in the menu next to the channel's consent indicator.
When a profile is manually unsuppressed, the Manually Unsuppressed from Email Marketing event appears on the profile's activity log.
Profiles that unsubscribed or marked an email as spam will not display an Unsubscribe option. Instead, you are able to use the Resubscribe option. If you received explicit consent from a recipient, you can resubscribe them.
When a profile resubscribes (e.g., via a list uploaded with consent or by filling out a signup form), all non-deliverability suppressions will be lifted. Deliverability suppressions (e.g., those due to hard bounces) are not removed by subscribe actions in order to protect your sender reputation.
How Klaviyo treats suppressed email profiles
Suppressed profiles and pricing
Klaviyo's pricing tiers are based on the total number of active profiles in your account. An active profile is any profile that isn't suppressed for email.
Klaviyo does not charge for suppressed profiles. If you navigate to Account > Overview, you will only see active profiles counting towards your email plan limit.
Meanwhile, on the Profiles tab of your account, you can see the counts for total Active Profiles and Suppressed Profiles separately, as shown above.
Exclusion from email sends
Klaviyo will automatically exclude all suppressed profiles from email sends. This means that, even if you try to send an email to suppressed profiles, Klaviyo will automatically ensure that these intended recipients are skipped.
For flow emails, under Recipient Activity > Other you will find a Skipped: Person Suppressed count that signals how many people didn't receive the email because they are suppressed in your account.
Suspicious emails
Suspicious emails are email addresses that have hard bounced at least 3 times across the Klaviyo infrastructure. This means that even if they have never hard bounced in your account, they have previously hard bounced in another Klaviyo user's account.
Suspicious emails will automatically be skipped from receiving emails. This is in an effort to preserve your sending reputation, as well as the sending reputation of other Klaviyo customers. You can see a count of the number of suspicious email addresses skipped, along with emails skipped for other reasons, in the Campaign Overview. You can also see this count in the Recipient Activity section for a given campaign.
Using suppression and deletion to manage inactive profiles
Active vs. suppressed vs. deleted profiles
- Active profiles can receive marketing messages (if they have consent) and are typically counted toward your plan’s profile limits.
- Suppressed profiles cannot receive marketing emails, even if they previously consented, and are not contactable for email campaigns.
- Deleted profiles are removed from your Klaviyo account; you will no longer see them in lists, segments, or reporting.
Because suppressed profiles cannot be emailed, they are generally not treated as active for email sending purposes, but they still exist in your account for history and analytics.
Suppressing inactive profiles to control costs
If you have many inactive or unengaged contacts that you don’t plan to email:
- Consider suppressing them instead of keeping them active.
- Suppression keeps their data for historical and compliance purposes while preventing future marketing sends.
To bulk-suppress inactive profiles you have identified (for example, via a segment of unengaged users):
- Create or open a list or segment that contains the profiles you want to suppress.
- Export or otherwise capture these contacts if you want a record outside Klaviyo.
- Use the suppression tools in your account to mark these profiles as suppressed for email.
Once suppressed, these contacts will not receive marketing emails even if they remain in your lists or segments.
Deleting profiles you no longer need
If you are certain you no longer need specific profiles or their history, you can choose to delete them entirely. Before deleting profiles:
- Understand that deletion is permanent; you will lose historical data for those people.
- Deleting profiles can impact analytics, segments, and flow histories that relied on that data.
To remove a small number of profiles:
- Open the profile in Klaviyo.
- Use the available option to delete that profile from your account.
For larger cleanups, create a segment of the profiles you want to remove and follow your account’s supported method for bulk deletion.
If you are unsure whether to suppress or delete, suppression is generally safer because it preserves data for reporting and compliance while preventing future marketing sends.
Consent vs. suppression status
In Klaviyo, there are 2 key concepts to understand which contacts are reachable and which have provided consent to receive marketing. These are consent status and suppression status.
Suppression and consent statuses are separate from each other. For example, a profile that has provided consent and is subscribed can be suppressed and retain its consent status.
Consent status
Consent status refers to whether a profile has opted-in to receive email marketing. At the top of the Details tab of a profile page, you'll see a profile’s consent status and ability to receive messages by channel. The different statuses you may see for consent are:
- Subscribed
Subscribed means that a profile has explicitly provided consent to receive marketing, and is able to receive communications through the corresponding channel. - Never subscribed
Never subscribed means the profile has neither subscribed, nor opted out of email marketing. For example, someone who placed an order or abandoned a checkout on your site may have added their email address during the checkout process, but never explicitly opted in. They are able to receive emails (e.g., an abandoned cart flow email), but you should exercise caution when contacting them. - Unsubscribed
Unsubscribed means that a profile is no longer interested in receiving your email marketing and has explicitly revoked consent for receiving it. Once unsubscribed, the profile will no longer be able to receive messages through the channel.
Suppression status
Suppression status refers to whether a profile is reachable through a channel. When a profile is suppressed for email, they cannot receive marketing messages. A suppressed profile cannot receive marketing messages, even if they have provided consent and indicated they want to receive emails, and do not contribute towards your Klaviyo billing plan.
Profiles can either be in a suppressed state, or an unsuppressed state.
Keeping vs. deleting suppressed profiles
There are several reasons why Klaviyo recommends keeping suppressed profiles in your account instead of deleting them:
- Klaviyo will never charge you for suppressed profiles
Klaviyo's pricing tiers are based on the total number of active profiles; you will never be prompted to upgrade to pay for suppressed contacts, so there is no cost associated with keeping them in your account. If you list clean and qualify for a lower pricing tier, make sure to select that lower tier under Account > Billing > Email Billing.
Klaviyo CDP billing is separate from Email and SMS plans on Klaviyo. Klaviyo CDP billing is based on total profiles, including suppressed profiles.
- Suppressed users still matter for business insights
Klaviyo's segmentation tools can help you gain important business insights. If you plan on creating segments to analyze customer behavior, website activity, etc., deleting profiles (even those you can't ultimately email) will skew these segments and make it impossible to get accurate insights.
Additional resources
- Understanding active email profiles in Klaviyo
Learn about active email profiles, including how they differ from suppressed email profiles, and how you can contact the people represented by these profiles.
- Understanding unsubscribes and resubscribes
Learn about unsubscribes in Klaviyo, and how to manually unsubscribe contacts yourself.
- How to manage email suppressions and delete profiles in bulk
Learn how to suppress a group of profiles in Klaviyo in bulk, remove suppressions in bulk, or delete profiles in bulk, and how the suppression modal helps you avoid suppressing recently active, high‐intent profiles.You will also learn how suppression recommendations on the Suppressed profiles page help you safely suppress low‐value, long‐term inactive profiles based on standard sunset flow criteria.