Unsubscribes and blocks

Two different things

	Unsubscribed	Blocked
Why	The person unsubscribed	The address bounced, the person reported spam, or you blocked it
Campaigns and broadcasts	Not sent	Not sent
Transactional email	Still sent	Not sent
Undo	A resubscribe, with consent	An unblock

Both are kept for the address, not the contact, so they survive deleting the contact and adding it again. The contact’s is_unsubscribed and is_blocked show the current state.

Unsubscribes

Every marketing email carries an unsubscribe link and the one-click unsubscribe header mail clients show next to the sender. A recipient who uses either is unsubscribed at once, and the campaigns they are in end for them. You can also unsubscribe an address yourself.

Resubscribes need consent

Opting someone back in needs proof that they asked: the wording they agreed to, when, and where from. Every resubscribe records that consent.

curl -X POST "https://sendocado.com/api/v1/projects/$PROJECT_ID/resubscribes" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SENDOCADO_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
  "email": "maya@example.com",
  "consent": {
    "wording": "Yes, send me product updates from Acme.",
    "ip_address": "203.0.113.42",
    "user_agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 14_6)",
    "consented_at": 1789999940000
  }
}'

Bounces and spam complaints

A permanent bounce (the mailbox does not exist) blocks the address. A temporary bounce, like a full mailbox, does not. A spam complaint blocks the address too, and unblocking it later needs consent.

Manual blocks and unblocks

Block an address to stop all email to it, transactional included. An unblock clears the bounces, complaints and manual blocks recorded so far; it never clears an unsubscribe.

The list

List blocked and unsubscribed addresses by reason. is_still_blocked turns false when a later unblock or resubscribe cleared the row, so the list is also the history.

See the Unsubscribes and blocks reference for every route.