> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.lettr.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Email Preferences Page

> The hosted Manage Email Preferences page every unsubscribe link opens: topic choices, a 30/60/90-day pause, a global unsubscribe with reasons, and recent emails

**Manage email preferences** is the hosted page that every `{{unsubscribe_link}}` in a campaign opens. Recipients see their current status, choose which topics they want, pause marketing email for a while, or leave entirely. The page is built in, so there is nothing to host or design yourself.

<Info>
  The page applies to marketing campaigns only. Transactional emails sent through the API or SMTP are not affected by anything a recipient does here. See [Complaints & Unsubscribes](/learn/suppressions/complaints-unsubscribes) for how unsubscribes work on the transactional side.
</Info>

## What Recipients See

The page is addressed to one contact and opens from the signed link in the email they received.

| Section                     | What it does                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  |
| --------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Status**                  | A pill in the header showing **Subscribed**, **Paused** (with the end date), **Unsubscribed**, or **Not receiving emails**. The last one appears for bounced, complained, or unverified contacts, who cannot change anything from this page because no delivery is happening. |
| **Choose what you receive** | One checkbox per topic. Every [public topic](/learn/audience/topics#public-vs-private-topics) on the team is listed, plus any private topic the contact currently holds.                                                                                                      |
| **Pause marketing emails**  | Pause for **30**, **60**, or **90 days**. A paused contact sees the end date and a **Resume now** button.                                                                                                                                                                     |
| **Recent emails**           | Up to the ten most recent campaigns this contact received, each linking to its web version, with the subject rendered exactly as it was delivered.                                                                                                                            |
| **Update preferences**      | The single button that commits the topic selection.                                                                                                                                                                                                                           |

The page renders in the contact's communication language, so a Czech recipient of a Czech-language team sees it in Czech.

## How Choices Are Applied

**Ticking and unticking topics** changes only topic subscriptions. A recipient who unticks "Product updates" but leaves "Newsletter" ticked stays `subscribed` and keeps receiving the newsletter. Topic opt-outs genuinely suppress sends: consent is re-checked when the campaign's recipients are resolved and again for every batch.

**Unticking every box** unsubscribes the contact from all marketing email. Committing an empty selection opens a short dialog asking for an optional reason before it goes through. The contact's status becomes `unsubscribed`, every topic is detached (private topics included), any active pause is cleared, and the `unsubscribe.link_unsubscribe` webhook event fires.

| Reason offered                    |                               |
| --------------------------------- | ----------------------------- |
| I get too many emails             | I never read these emails     |
| The content is not relevant to me | Too promotional               |
| I never signed up for this        | These emails look like spam   |
| I'm no longer interested          | I'm changing my email address |
| Other (free text)                 |                               |

**Coming back** uses the same button. An unsubscribed recipient ticks the topics they want and presses **Update preferences**, and their status returns to `subscribed` with exactly those topics. This is the only action on the page that resubscribes a contact; a pause never does.

**Pausing** keeps the contact `subscribed` but sets a `paused_until` date. Campaigns skip the contact until that date passes, after which sends resume on their own. Expiry is checked at send time, with no scheduled job that could fail. Pausing is only available to subscribed contacts.

## What You See on Your Side

Paused contacts are visible everywhere you look at your audience:

* **Audiences** shows a violet **Paused** badge with "until *date*" on each paused contact, and a **Paused** filter whose count matches the badges.
* **CSV exports** carry a `paused_until` column alongside `status`.
* **The API** returns a nullable `paused_until` field on contacts. Nothing you already parse changes; contacts that are not paused return `null`.

**A pause is owned by the recipient.** Contacts cannot be created or edited into a paused state from the app or the API. To stop mail to a contact from your side, change their [status](/learn/audience/contacts#contact-status).

Unsubscribe reasons land in the contact's [activity log](/learn/audience/contacts#activity-log) together with the status change.

## Redirects and Single-Topic Links

The `redirect` form of the merge tag still works. After the recipient unsubscribes from all email, Lettr sends them to your URL:

```html theme={null}
<a href="{{unsubscribe_link:redirect=https://yourdomain.com/unsubscribed}}">Unsubscribe</a>
```

Topic toggles and pauses do not redirect, since the recipient is expected to stay on the page.

The one-click unsubscribe used by mail clients through the `List-Unsubscribe` header bypasses the page entirely and unsubscribes immediately, as the RFC requires. See [List-Unsubscribe](/learn/suppressions/complaints-unsubscribes#list-unsubscribe).

## Reliability Notes

* **The page never fails closed.** A malformed or missing optional parameter is dropped and the page renders anyway, because refusing to show an unsubscribe page is worse than ignoring a bad query string.
* **Rate limits are per contact, not per IP.** Corporate security gateways that prefetch every link in an email cannot exhaust a shared limit and lock a real recipient out of unsubscribing.
* **Test emails open a preview.** Links in test sends open the same page in preview mode with a banner explaining that nothing will be recorded.

## Next Steps

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Topics" icon="tags" href="/learn/audience/topics">
    Decide which topics are public and appear on the page
  </Card>

  <Card title="The Unsubscribe Link" icon="link" href="/learn/campaigns/content-and-design#the-unsubscribe-link">
    Add the merge tag to your campaign footer
  </Card>

  <Card title="Contact Status" icon="user" href="/learn/audience/contacts#contact-status">
    How statuses and pauses decide who receives a campaign
  </Card>

  <Card title="Unsubscribe Best Practices" icon="shield-check" href="/knowledge-base/compliance/unsubscribe-best-practices">
    Keep opt-outs easy and compliant
  </Card>
</CardGroup>