Consent and double opt-in

Consent is tracked per contact and per channel (email, SMS). Every change is appended to an audit log that cannot be edited.

The three states

State	Meaning
Pending	A confirmation message was sent and not yet confirmed
Opted in	Consent is demonstrable. Reached by clicking the confirmation link, or by an evidenced import
Opted out	The contact refused or revoked, or a bounce or complaint revoked it

A contact who was never asked has no consent record for that channel at all.

Double opt-in

When a contact arrives without proof of consent they become pending and get a confirmation message on the channel they are joining. The link works indefinitely. There is no setting to switch this off and no API, form or store path that skips it.

Who changed what

Each change records where it came from: a person on your team, the contact on the preference page, the API, an import, a form, a store sync, a confirmation click, or a delivery event. A store sync cannot overwrite a choice made by your team, by the contact, by a confirmation click or by a delivery event.

Unsubscribing

Every promotional email must contain an unsubscribe link: keep Show unsubscribe link on in the designer's Footer block, or link other text with the unsubscribe merge tag. A promotional newsletter without it cannot be saved or scheduled. Contacts also have a preference page where they manage their own choices.

Promotional emails also carry the standard List-Unsubscribe header, so Gmail, Yahoo and Apple Mail show their own Unsubscribe button next to the sender's name. One tap in that button opts the contact out of email straight away, with no page to open, and the contact is recorded as having unsubscribed on the preference page. It stops email only: a contact's text messages are separate, and stay as they were. Nothing for you to set up. It is sent on emails that need consent, which is every newsletter; an email you send with the consent check turned off carries no such button, and neither does the test email you send from the designer.

Turning a channel off, or choosing Unsubscribe from all, always works: it is never rate limited, and Unsubscribe from all is still offered when the page cannot load the contact's current choices. Turning a channel back on sends a new confirmation message, so it is limited to five times per contact in each clock hour (and 20 from one internet address); the count starts again on the hour. A contact who passes that limit while also turning another channel off keeps the change that turned it off; only the channel they tried to turn on stays off, and the page tells them to try again later.

Suppression

Separately from consent, an address that hard-bounced or complained is suppressed. A suppressed address receives nothing, whatever its consent says.