Email Unsubscribe Services Don’t Really Work. Follow This (Free) Advice Instead.

I’m a prime candidate for email unsubscribe tools. I have six messy inboxes, and I am constantly overwhelmed. Years ago I tried getting a handle on my main account with an email unsubscribe service called Unroll.me. Right now it says I’ve rolled up 806 email subscriptions into a daily digest and unsubscribed from 2,025 subscriptions—and that’s just in my main email account. And yet, somehow, that inbox shows I have 217 unread messages that I can’t dig my way out of. Clearly, email spam becomes more irrepressible every day.

In search of answers to this common conundrum, I spoke with several experts to learn about consumer email behavior, marketing best practices, privacy regulations, and more. I interviewed Harry Brignull, the founder of Deceptive Design; Jayati Dev, PhD, a privacy engineer who studied security informatics at Indiana University and co-authored a paper on the barriers to unsubscribing from unwanted email; Frances Kern, an attorney at the Federal Trade Commission Division of Marketing Practices; and Jennifer King, PhD, Privacy and Data Policy Fellow at the Stanford University Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.

I also spoke with people from several email unsubscribe providers: Louis Balladur, co-founder of Foxintelligence; Mikael Berner, CEO of Edison Software; Kyryl Bystriakov, founder of Clean Email; James Ivings, co-founder of Leave Me Alone; and Dave Troy, CEO of Mailstrom and 410 Labs. (Unroll.me didn’t respond to requests for comment.) Lastly, I consulted Wirecutter’s editor of privacy and security coverage, Thorin Klosowski, for help in contextualizing our privacy and security concerns.

I went into this research with the intention of producing a typical Wirecutter guide; planning to recommend picks at various prices or for different situations. I tested six popular email unsubscribe services: Clean Email, Cleanfox, Edison Mail, Leave Me Alone, Mailstrom, and Unroll.me. I created six new email accounts for testing and subscribed each one to 30 overeager mailing lists, including those for common offenders like cosmetics companies, ticket sellers, hotel chains, news services, restaurants, Substack personalities, and shopping sites. Then I installed one unsubscribe tool per email account and let the emails collect over two to three weeks. Finally, I worked my way through unsubscribing, rolling up, pausing delivery, and filtering messages, and I tracked each inbox’s performance for a month.

The results were disappointing. We don’t recommend any of the services we tested.

Unsolicited emails suck, and Congress agrees. In 2003, the legislature passed the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM Act) in an attempt to address the people’s plight. That law, enforced by the FTC, sets email standards that every commercial provider must follow. Among them is a requirement that companies include an easy way to opt out of future communications and that they honor those opt-out requests in a timely manner. In theory, clicking the Unsubscribe link or button on unwanted emails should result in a less cluttered inbox. But reality often doesn’t align with theory.

Not even spam filters have won the battle against spammers. Many people with active email accounts can sense they’re getting more unwanted emails than ever before. The semi-defunct Spam Archive, run by Bruce Guenter, collected 5.1 million spam emails over 15 years (1998 to 2013), as noted during the 9th IEEE International Conference on Collaborative Computing: Networking, Applications and Worksharing. More recently, from 2019 to 2021, the number of unsolicited-email reports has quadrupled, according to the FTC’s 2021 Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book. And that’s only among documented complaints, said Frances Kern, an attorney at the FTC’s Division of Marketing Practices. She admitted that self-reporting can be laborious for those who receive dozens of unwanted or spam emails a day, so the majority of complaints never make it into its system.

“Not much has changed [with the CAN-SPAM Act] in 20 years,” said Jennifer King, PhD, Privacy and Data Policy Fellow at the Stanford University Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. “So much of this is happening at scale, so a single consumer trying to fight back is just the epitome of the little, little, tiny mouse trying to overthrow the giant.”

Rather than report the emails to the FTC, follow multistep unsubscribe prompts, or hunt for a tiny Unsubscribe link buried in the message, most people either ignore the emails, delete them, or mark them as spam, according to a small study from the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. On average, the study found, people subscribe to 93 email lists, but 85% to 90% of the messages are never read.

“Users want a clean inbox but are simply overwhelmed by the high frequency of marketing emails,” said Jayati Dev, PhD, a privacy engineer who co-authored the paper. And mechanisms for unsubscribing from unwanted messages are often complex and inaccessible, she said. Some people become so overwhelmed with the emails they receive that they abandon their accounts altogether and start anew.

The convoluted unsubscribe process that many mailing lists employ is a prime example of a phenomenon known as dark patterns, a term coined by UX specialist Harry Brignull, who later renamed the problem deceptive design to be clearer and more inclusive. These practices manipulate people and make it extremely difficult to delete subscriptions, services, and unwanted emails. Examples of deceptive design include adding surprise items into a virtual shopping cart, making promotional offers mandatory, “confirm shaming” people into keeping a service, or insisting on a multistep process to unsubscribe. “Every step turns into persuasion, and people can’t exercise consent when they’ve been tricked,” Brignull warned.

The tricks that lock you into an ouroboros of mailings don’t stop there. For example, email segmentation and drip-marketing campaigns can cause you to be signed up for a dozen types of emails from the same company, so unsubscribing from one doesn’t unsubscribe you from everything. Retailer websites, for example, can send deal alerts, account updates, shipping notifications, “we miss you” messages, and promotions. Without your knowledge, each message can come from a separate email subscription. The tools we tested can’t reliably differentiate between assorted mailing lists from the same company and remove you from all those lists. Don’t be surprised if an email unsubscribe service asks you to approve unsubscribe requests multiple times for the same company.

Bad email practices also create accessibility concerns. When an email sender wants you to do something, it often makes the text of its request large and easy to read. But finding the little Unsubscribe button or link can feel like an unwanted treasure hunt. Neurodivergent people may give up easily if they have to make several clicks to unsubscribe from a service, our experts say. Or, people with limited vision may struggle to find the button or link in the first place. The link is often buried in the footer or the body of a long email and presented in a tiny, grayed-out font. This goes against design standards set by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, which say that most text and images should have a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1.

For example, the Unsubscribe links on Wirecutter’s newsletters have a contrast ratio of 21:1, which AccessibilityChecker.org describes as “excellent.” The Washington Post’s footer has a contrast ratio of 13:1, which is also categorized as “excellent.” Both newsletters use small fonts, a tactic that our experts consider to be deceptive design—though the Wirecutter newsletter team bolds our Unsubscribe link to make it easier to see. (Note that some companies skirt this standard by describing the footer section of an email created by a script as a user interface component, which doesn’t have to abide by the same accessibility standards.)

The complexities of bad design, marketing practices, and user behavior make it hard for unsubscribe services to do their job in a way that people expect them to—so hard that it’s not worthwhile for people to use them, according to several experts we interviewed. “The value proposition is very limited concerning what you have to give them in return,” Brignull said, referring to people’s email data. “It does make me wonder what they’re really doing with the data and whether it’s really worth the risk.”

Yet, as the unsubscribe providers noted in interviews with us, they’re attempting to solve an issue caused by commercial and spam-email senders that don’t comply with CAN-SPAM regulations. Even when you’re paying for a service, you’re still at the mercy of your junk email.

Ultimately, you can use some techniques to block emails that come flooding in due to these unscrupulous tactics. Although it takes a bit of effort, you can manage your inbox on your own terms—without giving your data away to yet another company.

Email unsubscribe services promise to help you regain control of your inbox by identifying and unsubscribing from unwanted emails on your behalf. After testing six popular services over two months, we found that unsubscribing from unwanted emails—even when you’re paying someone else to do it—is a losing battle. Here’s why.

The performance issues

On the surface, the email unsubscribe services we tested appeared to be doing their job. At the end of the test period, we had received only a dozen or so spam emails in each account’s primary inbox, rather than 100 of them.

However, after examining our test email accounts, we found that many of the services didn’t actually unsubscribe us from anything. Edison Mail and Unroll.me, for example, set rules or filters that moved unwanted emails into newly created subfolders called “Unsubscribed” or simply dumped them in the trash bin. When we requested that emails be rolled up into a daily digest or that a delivery be paused, Clean Email and Leave Me Alone created subfolders labeled “Read Later,” “Rollups,” or “To-Do List.” So even though these junk emails were hidden from sight, they were still taking up valuable storage space. (And you may have to pay for such hidden stashes: If you don’t clean out these subfolders or a larger trash bin, your email provider may ask you to pay a fee if you hit its storage limit.)

In our interviews, the makers of these unsubscribe tools mentioned that many email providers automatically empty the trash bin after several weeks on the user’s behalf. But this is an inadequate explanation for the disappointing performance of services that require access to your private data or charge a fee in exchange for a supposed fix to the email-inundation problem. (More on that later.) So we’ll call these unsubscribe failures.

When we checked these hidden folders, we found hundreds of emails from lists that these services had promised to eliminate—ranging from 129 emails with Edison Mail to 345 emails with Clean Email. Hundreds more had also accumulated in the trash.

Overall, these email unsubscribe services do the following, to varying degrees:

• Try to unsubscribe you: They ask the unwanted-email sender to unsubscribe you from its mailing list by sending an email request or utilizing the Unsubscribe button or link in an email you receive.
• Create inbox rules: They set rules or filters in your email client that send unwanted emails to a newly created subfolder or to the trash bin.
• Make a block list: They add unwanted emails to their private list of bad-faith emailers that don’t honor unsubscribe requests, and they promise to block those senders’ messages from arriving in your inbox.

When we asked about these convoluted workarounds, the unsubscribe services offered varying explanations. Edison Mail CEO Mikael Berner called traditional email Unsubscribe links “unreliable,” adding that people who used those functions “continued to receive messages well after unsubscribing.” Clean Email, Cleanfox, and Mailstrom spokespeople echoed that sentiment in our interviews; each of the services creates its own block lists or trash filters. And James Ivings, founder of Leave Me Alone, said the service doesn’t permanently delete messages on behalf of clients but instead moves all unsubscribe failures to a subfolder, rather than to the trash bin. Or, depending on the particular feature you use, it may instead block any lists you previously tried to unsubscribe from.

The privacy considerations

Linking any service to your email account is a difficult decision. To function, most of these tools and services need access to your account, and that means they get a comprehensive view into your email. That can get squirrely for privacy, as evidenced by the 2019 FTC settlement with the service Unroll.me, which the FTC alleged in a complaint “failed to disclose adequately” that it collected and sold information from its users’ inboxes.

That controversy has led to more transparency among these types of services but still hasn’t eradicated every concern. It has also divided the unsubscribe services into two camps: the free ones, which disclose the fact that they use the data they collect for market studies and then share it with advertisers, product developers, and consumer-behavior marketers; and the paid services, some of which promise that they don’t share anything with third parties. The good news is, everyone now knows that the free services analyze this data and package it up for various marketing purposes. The bad news is, well, they analyze this data and package it up for various marketing purposes.

The developers behind every unsubscribe tool we tested told us that although they can technically see the contents of customer emails, the emails undergo security assessments and have access restricted or information redacted when possible, and they encrypt the data that they do collect. These companies often claim to use algorithms to filter out personal emails and gather only commercial emails, but as Thorin Klosowski, Wirecutter’s editor of privacy and security coverage, noted, that’s nearly impossible to validate, and even in the best cases it can fail. Though the companies all emphasize that safeguards are in place, it’s possible that any third-party service you give permission to view your email accounts might access emails it isn’t supposed to, including email conversations with doctors, pharmacists, teachers, or accountants.

We combed through the policies of each company but also sent each a questionnaire with specific questions about their level of access, where the data goes, and what gets shared. Here’s what they told us.

Can the service read your emails?

• Clean Email: Yes.
• Cleanfox: Yes.
• Edison Mail: Yes.
• Leave Me Alone: Yes.
• Mailstrom: Yes.
• Unroll.me: Yes.

Are those emails ever stored on company servers?

• Clean Email: Full messages aren’t stored on the servers.
• Cleanfox: Emails aren’t stored on the servers.
• Edison Mail: Works to limit how much information is stored on company servers and transfers most of the messages between the user device and mail provider.
• Leave Me Alone: Content the user authorizes, such as digest emails. If you do not use the service’s roll-up feature and only unsubscribe, it doesn’t store anything.
• Mailstrom: Only email subject lines.
• Unroll.me: No; only accessed through IMAP so they remain secure in the email client.

Is data shared with a third party?

• Clean Email: No.
• Cleanfox: Yes.
• Edison Mail: Yes.
• Leave Me Alone: No.
• Mailstrom: No.
• Unroll.me: Yes.

What data is shared with third parties and why?

• Clean Email: n/a.
• Cleanfox: Collected data, such as age, gender, purchase history, price, delivery method, discounts, and city of delivery, is anonymized and aggregated for market studies.
• Edison Mail: Insights about shopping trends from aggregated and anonymized transaction data provided by app users.
• Leave Me Alone: n/a.
• Mailstrom: n/a.
• Unroll.me: Collect data for market studies provided by Nielsen Consumer, LLC.

Do you have dedicated data usage explanations (besides a privacy policy)?

• Clean Email: Not exactly, but details are included near the bottom of the home page.
• Cleanfox: Yes.
• Edison Mail: Yes.
• Leave Me Alone: Yes, dedicated security and privacy pages.
• Mailstrom: No.
• Unroll.me: Yes.

The fees

Some email decluttering tools are free, while others charge from $9 to $15 a month or from $30 to $200 for a yearly subscription. But even when you pay, there’s no guarantee that emails won’t slip through the cracks. For example, the Clean Email strategy left me with 345 individual emails in my inbox and filtered subfolders of emails it couldn’t unsubscribe from, Edison Mail produced 129 emails, Leave Me Alone let 284 emails through, and Mailstrom left behind 142 junk emails. Ultimately, even if these services are hiding emails from your inbox, they’re not actually unsubscribing you from the mailing lists. You’re effectively paying someone to sweep them under the rug.

Price for one inbox, excluding sales and bulk discounts:

• Clean Email: $10 per month; $120 per year.
• Cleanfox: Free.
• Edison Mail: Free.
• Leave Me Alone: $9 per month or $90 per year for general plan; $16 per month or $160 per year for advanced plan.
• Mailstrom: $9 per month or $60 per year for basic plan; $14 per month or $100 per year for plus plan; $30 per month or $200 per year for pro plan.
• Unroll.me: Free.

The situation is not hopeless: You have several ways to get a handle on your inbox without paying a third party and potentially compromising your data. You can use your email client’s built-in tools (including its own Unsubscribe button or link), set email filters to block unwanted messages entirely, and create an email alias to help keep things organized.

1. Hit the Unsubscribe button or link

Many email providers detect when emails include an Unsubscribe button or link and bring it to the top, making it easier for you to find. When you open an email, expand your email client’s sender bar and check to see if it has an Unsubscribe link, as in the image above. If so, click it and follow the on-screen prompts.

If not, you can always use Ctrl+F (or Cmd+F on a Mac) to locate an Unsubscribe link hidden in the email footer and click through that way. Try searching for “unsubscribe” or “account preferences.”

2. Mark it as spam

Marketers have 10 business days to honor your unsubscribe request. After that, it’s a violation of the CAN-SPAM Act for a sender to continue emailing you. If the emails keep coming, you’re well within your rights to mark them as spam using your email client’s built-in Spam button. Doing so helps your email client recognize the sender and send future messages directly to your spam folder. “Email spam filters have gotten a lot better at catching that stuff,” noted the FTC’s Frances Kern.

3. Set email rules and filters

Email clients like Apple Mail, Gmail, and Outlook can create rules that trigger email actions. These rules, sometimes called filters, automatically move, flag, or respond to email messages. For example, you can tag the email address from an annoying shopping website so that every message automatically moves to a Shopping folder in your email client, or you can set a rule that automatically deletes those messages as they arrive in your inbox.

4. Create an email alias

Alternatively, you can create an alias—an assumed email identity that keeps some personal information secure. You can then use this alias to sign up for accounts at online stores and for newsletters, which is great because it means you’re not giving hundreds of newsletter senders your real email address. Email clients typically create aliases by adding a text string to the real address or by randomly generating an address that forwards to a preferred email account.

Apple’s iCloud lets you create up to three email aliases. Alternatively, you can enable Hide My Email, which generates a randomized email address when you sign up for services in Apple Mail, Safari, or supported third-party applications.

Gmail creates aliases when you add a plus sign and your choice of characters to the end of your username. For example, kingtchalla+avengers@gmail.com and kingtchalla+wakanda@gmail.com automatically go to kingtchalla@gmail.com. You can use aliases to categorize mail by setting up matching filters that sort, archive, delete, or forward the messages depending on the alias used. So you could use kingtchalla+clothes@gmail.com, for instance, to sign up for emails from clothing stores, and all related emails would end up in a subfolder containing only Nordstrom and Versace ads. Although you can’t send emails using these Gmail aliases, they still offer a way to sort incoming messages without creating multiple accounts.

Outlook’s alias feature, meanwhile, allows you to sign in from any registered alias account, and it still shares that alias’s inbox, contact list, and account settings with those of the primary email address. This makes it easier for you to keep a handle on emails without having to access different log-in credentials, an extra step that may deter some people from creating aliases to wrangle emails in the first place.

If you find that your email provider’s alias options aren’t adequate, you have another alternative: trustworthy burner-email providers such as the private, email-forwarding app SimpleLogin and the disposable inbox Maildrop. Both keep email addresses private and let you deactivate an alias at any time to ensure that unwanted messages stay gone.

This article includes additional reporting by Thorin Klosowski and was edited by Ben Keough and Erica Ogg.

We tested Clean Email, Cleanfox, Edison Mail, Leave Me Alone, Mailstrom, and Unroll.me. None of these services truly unsubscribed us from unwanted emails. Instead, they created filters and rules that sent messages to our inbox folders or the trash bin.

We considered testing Trimbox in a recent update to this guide, but the Chrome extension creates filters similar to other products we’ve tested.

This article includes additional reporting by Thorin Klosowski and was edited by Ben Keough and Erica Ogg.