When someone unsubscribes from your mailing list, their email address is automatically suppressed from your list of subscribers. But usually it’s not deleted.
The email marketing companies have this practice in place in order to keep unaltered the reports provided for your previous mailings.
It looks fine, but there’s a problem hidden here… Some companies charge you not only for your subscribers but also for the unsubscribes.
I was very surprised to find out that AWeber claims that it charges you based on the number of subscribers while the reality is different.
The truth is that AWeber also charges for the unsubscribes and many users aren’t aware of it.
Paying, for example, $29 instead of the expected $19 is quite an unpleasant surprise, isn’t it?
So I’ve decided to investigate this issue, see the practices of the other email marketing companies and make their users aware.
1. Who Charges for Unsubscribes and Who Doesn’t Do it?
MadMimi: “The suppressed list is where Mad Mimi stores all your Bounced, Unsubscribed, and Unconfirmed subscribers. The amount of contacts stored here DO NOT count toward your total of stored contacts (what we use to determine your plan level).” – Source
MailChimp: “Unsubscribed and non-subscribed transactional recipients only count toward your monthly bill if you’ve sent to them in the past 30 days.” – Source
GetResponse: “With GetResponse you are not charged for unsubscribed contacts. You can see them in your account as ‘inactive’. ‘Inactive Contacts’ are those who have unsubscribed themselves, or have been removed by the account owner form the mailing list. The list also contains unconfirmed contacts, i.e. those who did not click on the confirmation email when it was sent to them, as well as bouncing emails.” – Source: email correspondence with Daria Kikola, Customer Success Team.
Campaigner: “You are not charged for hard-bounces (invalid email addresses) or unsubscribes that you carry over into the next billing period.” – Source: email correspondence with Paul Bourgault, Campaigner Support Specialist.
iContact: “iContact only charge our customers based on the number of contacts that are subscribed to lists. The unsubscribed, do not contact, and bounced contacts are not taken against the subscriber count. Yes, we do not charge for unsubscribes, we would only charge you for subscribed contacts.” – Source: email correspondence with Fred, Technical Support Representative.
VerticalResponse: “As soon as an email address has unsubscribed from your mailing lists they are no longer counted towards the total number of active emails in your account. The subscription is based on the active members so you are not paying for the unsubscribed addresses.” – Source: email correspondence with Jaime Woo, Customer Support Representative.
ActiveCampaign: “We only count ‘active’ contacts. Bounced and unsubscribed contacts do not count towards your limit.” – Source: email correspondence with John M., Customer Support Rep.
ImnicaMail: “The subscriber count is unique, so whether or not the subscriber’s email address is on multiple lists or only one list, it will only count as one subscriber. Email addresses in your Global Suppression List does NOT count toward your account limit.” – Source
TheirInbox: “We charge for the number of contacts that you have in your lists. This does not include subscribers that may have unsubscribed from your list.” – Source: email correspondence with Vince Smith, TheirInbox CEO.
Companies that don’t charge based on the number of subscribers/contacts but only on the number of messages that are sent: StreamSend, EmailBrain, JangoMail, SendGrid, SendinBlue, MailGun, MailJet
PinPointe: “Our pay-as-you-go prices allow you to pre-purchase credits that can be used any time during a 12 month period. […] We also offer a subscription based on the total number of active contacts you will upload and store in Pinpointe.” – Source
INinbox: “People that unsubscribe from your list still stay in the database. They will be transferred to the tab ‘inactive’. These contacts do count as a subscriber, however you can delete them manually from the database so they do not count and you don’t pay for them. Furthermore, people that hardbounce or click spam will always stay in the database, but do never count as a subscriber.” – Source: email correspondence with Jelle Mostert, INinbox Relationship Manager.
GraphicMail: “With our Per Contact plan we charge you for the net amount of email addresses that you have in your account — addresses that are repeated across lists are only counted once. If you have unsubscribed addresses in your account, these will still be counted unless they are removed from the account.” – Source: email correspondence with Juan Sebastian – The GraphicMail Team.
MailKitchen: Unknown policy. The only company who didn’t respond to my question.
As you can see, the good news is that very few email marketing companies charge their customers for unsubscribes.
If you’re one of these customers, here are some solutions…
2. Solutions for Avoiding Extra Charges for Unsubscribes
2.1. Change your email marketing service provider. That’s the most radical solution but may not always be the most appropriate. Make sure that the new service provider:
a) lets you import your subscribers without needing to re-confirm their subscription.
b) doesn’t have greater disadvantages than the previous one.
2.2. Before each billing period ends, delete the unsubscribes. Beware: deleting the unsubscribes will result in altering some of the past reports from your account. If you need such pieces of information, copy them somewhere else or make a screen capture.
To Your Email Marketing Success!
Adrian Jock
P.S. Your turn. Who is your email marketing service provider? Does it charge you for unsubscribes? The comment area below is waiting for you…
Hi Adrian
Thanks for all that research. Very interesting. I was aware of this – the hard way of course (being charged when I didn’t expect to be).
I’ve since changed suppliers to GVO and to be honest I don’t know the answer to your question, because I get such a huge allowance I’m currently in now danger of hitting it. But I will contact them and ask them.
Thanks for raising awareness of this practice.
Joy
Hi Joy,
Thank you for your comment. I don’t get very frequently emails sent via GVO. But when I get them… they land in my Gmail spam folder. Are you aware of such a big issue?
Hi Adrian,
I remember sharing about a Aweber charging for an subscribers and I am very happy to see the way you took the responsibility to research and find out what is the industry practice.
It appears after your research that a Aweber not only charges more for just 500 subscribers but also makes money on unsubscribers. This is a costly affair!
Although I have had no other problem with a waiver and they are email delivery is also not so bad, I am going to rock the boat and try GetResponse.
Why those guys?
For one, they seem to give a good competition to Aweber in terms of features, forms and integration with popular services. At the same time, they are cheaper for up to 2500 subscribers. In addition, I have 30 days to try things out. So, I am going to give it a shot and if it works, all credit goes to your persistence on this matter :-)
I also noticed that Neil Patel migrated his list from Aweber to Get Response towards end of last year. Now, if he is doing something like this, I believe that he knows what he’s doing and now that motivates me a little bit more towards GetResponse :-)
Anyways, I will keep you posted on the progress and if you have any questions, probably I will ping you.
Thank you for your awesome contribution and possibly saving a few bucks and for many people through your post :-)
Regards,
Kumar
Hi Kumar,
Thank you for your comment. I use and recommend MadMimi. Their prices are affordable and the customer support simply rocks (always responding within less than 1 hr).
Customer support is important…
Almost all companies listed here got the same question from me. It was very interesting to see how quickly they respond.
MadMimi and Campaigner responded within 3 minutes. Other companies needed way much more, even 48 hours.
One company not listed here wasn’t even able to offer a crystal clear answer, despite of the fact that was the only one who got a second message including a further clarification on my question.
Hi Adrian
GVO have recently added a spam checking facility that stops such emails being even sent.
I’ve compared the open rates to what I get with Aweber and they’re about the same.
Joy
Joy, you didn’t understand my point. I guess that’s because you don’t know some tech stuff. Let me explain you…
There are good spam checkers and bad spam checkers. I don’t know what kind of spam checker GVO has. A good spam checker is an useful tool. However, a spam checker doesn’t fully replicate how a spam filter works.
Spam filters use many criteria in order to decide whether a message has to be sent to the spam folder or not. Spam checkers usually use only one or two of these criteria used by the spam filters.
See the difference? Because of that difference, even if some messages pass the spam checkers tests actually they still may be routed to the spam folder.
In my previous comment I wasn’t referring to what I’ve been told by others. I was referring to what I get in my spam folder: messages sent via GVO.
Finally, I thought that you may want a proof for my claims. So I subscribed to your mailing list (I used an email address that I use for tests, disregard it, not important).
Here’s the result… Check the image below.
There’s definitely some unscrupulous companies out there Adrian!
I remember when I found out about AWeber charging for anyone who’d unsubscribed I was surprised. It was one of the reasons I decided to first move to Mad Mimi and then on to GetResponse.
I loved Mad Mimi but I kept having some issues with list totals not adding up and there were some reports I used to use with AWeber but I had to ask Mad Mimi to run them manually in order to get the information.
I wasn’t aware that INInbox also charge for unsubscribers too. You learn something new every day!
Hi Tim,
Thank you for the comment.
I don’t think that charging for unsubscribes is the real problem.
The real problem is burying the info in an irrelevant help article or not posting it at all on their websites, as if charging for unsubscribes is the industry standard and everyone knows it, so there’s no point in emphasizing it.
I just proved it that it’s not an industry standard. So… With all due respect, there’s only one possible wording for such practices: hidden charges.
Thanks for clarifying Adrian.
I’ll take this up with GVO. I appreciate your time.
Joy
You’re welcome Joy. I don’t think that you’ll solve anything though. That’s an old issue, it’s not something new. Messages sent by GVO users land in Gmail’s spam folders since a lot of time. Not days, weeks or months. Since years…
Good luck anyway!
That’s awesome that you looked into each service like that Adrian. I’ve known about that with AWeber for a while, I even blogged about it a couple of years ago. I keep a pretty clean list, even removing unopens after 6+ months but there is a risk to that as well because not every open is recorded (images turned off). I’ve been with AWeber for many years but I’m seriously thinking of GetResponse since Leslie Samuel’s been talking about it. He really makes a solid case on why it beats the pants off AWeber.
Hi Brian,
I think that removing unopens after a certain period of time is a bad practice. I’ve explained the reasons here, but it seems that you already know them. Why don’t you clean your list based on the clicks records? Unlike the opens, the clicks are measured accurately.
Hi Adrian,
It’s really shocking for me to know that if someone unsubscribe from the list then companies put some charge.
This is not fair. Though I don’t have any experience regarding any company but still it’s not a good thing to know.
Thanks for making me aware about the list.
Have a nice week.:)
~Ravi
Hi Ravi,
Your shock is nothing compared to the shock some AWeber users had when they were billed more than they expected ;-) Ask Kumar Gauraw!
Hello Adrian,
Your post is quite revealing, I must say and hopefully, I now know which companies to play safe around.
Kumar sometimes published a post about companies charging for persons who have unsubscribed and I remember I really loved the post – heck, who wants to pay for a guy who’s gone? His tips (as yours) truly rock! Online, if you’re not careful, the over head would easily surpass everything profit and your blog would then be a charity!
By the way, I use MailChimp and so far, they do not charge for unsubscribes and their service is quite perfect.
Make the day great!
Always,
Terungwa
Hi Akaahan,
Thank you for your comment.
Indeed MailChimp users aren’t charged for unsubscribes, but MailChimp isn’t that perfect. You are charged for duplicate email addresses. I developed this topic in my article The Unexpected Side Effect of Your Email List Segmentation ;-)
By the way, Kumar didn’t publish an article about companies who charge for unsubscribes, but an article about one single company who charges for unsubscribes (AWeber) ;-)
Wow Adrian, I did not know that these services were charging for unsubscribers. WOw! That seems a little unfair. I do use MailChimp still and haven’t converted to a paid type of service. I see in a comment above you mention about their duplicate email addresses, interesting. I will have to check out that post as well. Thanks Adrian for this information. Good to know!
Hi Lisa,
Actually there are not so many services that charge for unsubscribes. I found out only 3 companies ;-)
There are 2 reasons why you and many others didn’t know about such charges:
1) the charges are quite hidden;
2) “AWeber is the best” reviews are biased and don’t include the real cons ;-)
Hi Adrian,
It’s been a while. I hope everything is going well.
I heard no to long ago that these companies charge you for unsubscribers. This is crazy and unfair at the same time.
I appreciate you doing some digging and sharing this with me. I’m glad to know MailChimp is not charging for unsubscribers!
Have a good week Adrian!
Hi Steven,
Thank you for your comment. It seems that MailChimp is quite popular :) Have a good week too!
Hi Adrian,
I’ve learned a couple of years or so ago (the hard way) that Aweber was charging for unsubscribers, because that month they charged me an extra $10 when I thought that I was still under the limit.
So, of course, first thing I did is call their customer service and that’s how I found out. Yes, unsubscribers stay in the database and are totally counted the same as if they were still subscribed.
One thing I’ve learned though, is that not only people who have unsubscribed, but even the ones that haven’t open an email in over 3 months is of any value for me, so I delete them as I go. No need to pay for dead bodies :) right?
At times I send emails warning them it’s the last one they’ll receive unless they reply. That’s a good way to do house cleaning as well and keep monthly fee low.
Thanks for your deep research here.
Hi Sylviane,
Thank you for your comment.
Deleting inactive subscribers is fine if you can’t re-engage them. But it depends on how you define an inactive subscriber.
If you define an inactive subscriber as someone who haven’t clicked your links during a certain period of time, you can’t be wrong.
If you define an inactive subscriber as someone who haven’t opened your emails during a certain period of time, sometimes you may delete active subscribers.
That’s because the open rates cannot be measured accurately.
In addition to my article mentioned above, you can also read AWeber’s article How Do Email Marketing Companies Track Email Opens?.
In that article, Justin Premick – former Director of Educational Products at AWeber – suggested to do exactly what you do. However, if you read the comments, namely my conversation with Justin, you’ll see that he agrees with me ;-)
OK, Adrian, thanks for this. I will get some education on that, and read those.
Recently I deleted a bunch that had not opened my emails in 6+ months. Oops I hope I didn’t make a mistake.
You’re welcome, Sylviane.
I cannot know whether you made a mistake or not. Only you can find it. If the subscribers weren’t actually deleted but removed from the active subscribers list and moved to “Suppressed” list (or whatever your email provider calls it), then you can check whether there were clicks or not.
Wow! That’s such an important information. Thanks for sharing it Adrian
I quit AWeber for INinbox some months back and Jelle has been so helpful
It’s bad that Aweber uses hidden tricks to steal away our money. You can imaging what they get from the 1000s of subscribers they have.
It’s just so wonderful for you to know about this and share it with us.
Do have a wonderful week ahead bro
Hi Enstine,
Thank you for your comment. You missed something…
1) Jelle has confirmed to me that INinbox charges too for unsubscribes. It is mentioned in this article, didn’t you notice? ;-)
2) INinbox is really a no-no company and it has the worst affiliate program I’ve seen in my life (14 yrs of internet marketing).
Read the reasons here: https://www.adrianjock.com/ininbox-aweber-alternative/
By the way, each time when my affiliate link didn’t work, I checked also your affiliate link in order to be sure that it’s a general problem. Your affiliate link and all INinbox affiliate links didn’t work too for many days in a row, sometimes even weeks ;-)
I was one of the first to subscribe to GetResponse and got their platinum deal back then, it gives me at least 10k subscribers on the list before charging extra for more. I’ve never had any trouble with them.
I never knew Aweber did that, damn that’s crazy. I almost signed up to try them back in the day :)
Thank you for your comment, Dennis. Subscribing in the early days has some advantages. For example, the marketers who joined AWeber in its early days actually use another AWeber: they pay the same monthly fee no matter their list size ;-)
Great article. I never knew Aweber charged for unsubscribers. I have had a Get Response for ages (unfortunately no list!) and now I am in QSC. I have found them to be very good. Their live chat is a godsend and they really gave me a lot of help and quickly too.
Thanks for your hard work.
Good luck with your challenge.
Annette
Hi Adrian, thanks for the info. I never knew we can get charged for having people unsubscribe to our list.
But thank goodness I went with getResponse, no surprises there :)
Adrian this is good to know. I have Mail Chimp so I will proceed knowing how they do things. Some companies are a little shifty; definitely should not be charging for folks who are no longer on your list because….ummmm….they are no longer on your list LOL. These guys and gals are in the ethers as far as your list building is concerned.
Ryan