Concept
Suppressions
How Emailit's suppression list stops mail to addresses that bounced, complained or opted out, what each type blocks, and how entries are added and expire.
A suppression is an email address your workspace won’t send to. The suppression list protects your sender reputation by stopping mail to addresses that bounced, complained or asked not to be contacted. This page explains how suppressions work. To view or change the list, see Manage suppressions.
How it works
When a message is about to go out, Emailit checks the recipient against the workspace’s suppression list. If the address is suppressed:
- the message isn’t sent,
- its status becomes
suppressed, with the suppression’s reason in its delivery history, - an
email.suppressedevent fires.
Campaigns check the list before they create any emails, so suppressed addresses are left out of the send and counted under Suppressed in the campaign report.
The list belongs to one workspace. Matching ignores letter case, so Ada@Example.com and ada@example.com are the same address.
Suppression types
Each suppression has a type. The type decides what it blocks.
| Type | Typically added by | Blocks API and SMTP email | Blocks campaigns |
|---|---|---|---|
recipient |
You (default), or Emailit after bounces | Yes | Yes |
bounce |
You, for example when importing bounces from another provider | No | Yes |
complaint |
Emailit after a spam complaint, or you | No | Yes |
unsubscribe |
You, for opt-outs collected elsewhere | No | Yes |
In short: a recipient suppression stops all mail to the address. The other types only stop campaigns, so transactional email such as receipts and password resets still reaches the person.
An address can have more than one suppression as long as each has a different type. Adding the same address with the same type again returns 409.
What a suppression contains
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
id |
Starts with sup_. |
email |
The suppressed address, stored in lowercase. |
type |
recipient, bounce, complaint or unsubscribe. Defaults to recipient. |
reason |
Free text, such as bounce, complaint or Requested removal by phone. |
keep_until |
When the suppression expires. Empty means it never expires. |
created_at |
When it was added. |
Automatic suppression
Emailit adds suppressions for you when mail fails or draws complaints:
| Trigger | Type | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| A late bounce report arrives | recipient |
bounce |
| All 7 delivery attempts fail | recipient |
too many soft fails |
| A second hard bounce to the same address within 24 hours | recipient |
too many bounces |
| A recipient reports the message as spam | complaint |
complaint |
Automatic suppression is on for every workspace. On Pro and Business, admins can turn it off or limit it to bounces or complaints. See Bounces and complaints.
| Pay as you go | Pro | Business | Custom | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Configurable automatic suppression | — | Included | Included | — |
How suppressions end
A suppression stays until one of these happens:
- It expires. Once
keep_untilhas passed, the address is no longer suppressed. Use it for temporary holds, for example"keep_until": "in 30 days". - You delete it in the dashboard or with the API.
- A message to the address is delivered. Emailit removes the address’s
recipientsuppression after a successful delivery. - An automation removes it with the Remove from suppressions step.
A message that was already suppressed doesn’t go out when you delete the suppression. Retry it to send it again. See Retry suppressed emails.
Events
| Event | Fires when |
|---|---|
suppression.created |
You add a suppression in the dashboard, with the API, by CSV import or with an automation. |
suppression.updated |
A suppression is changed. |
suppression.deleted |
A suppression is deleted. |
email.suppressed |
A message wasn’t sent because its recipient is suppressed. |
Suppressions that Emailit adds automatically don’t fire suppression.created. To react to them, listen for email.bounced and email.complained.
Data retention
Bounced and suppressed message data is always retained for compliance purposes, whatever your data retention settings, so you can always see why an address was blocked.