Every marketing email must include an unsubscribe option to remain compliant with regulations in your region. Your account includes a default unsubscribe page and a default preference centre. You can use one or both of these default options, or create a custom preference centre or unsubscribe form.
If you use a customised unsubscribe form hosted on your site, our team must review and approve it before it replaces the default page. Unsubscribes submitted through a customised form don’t appear in campaign‑level unsubscribe reporting, but they still suppress the contact at the account level.
If your account is part of a multi-brand setup, unsubscribe and preference centre settings may be inherited from a parent account. In this case, you can’t edit them directly. Contact your Customer Success Manager to change or revert to default.
Understand your options
Default unsubscribe page
A Dotdigital‑hosted page that immediately unsubscribes a contact from all email.
Custom unsubscribe form (on your website)
A form you host on your website by embedding the form code you generate in Dotdigital. You can unsubscribe email, SMS, or both and optionally include a subscribe option for new contacts. Use of a custom unsubscribe form requires Dotdigital compliance approval before activation.
Default preference centre
A Dotdigital‑hosted page where contacts can:Update public contact data fields.
Update public marketing preferences.
Join/leave public lists.
Unsubscribe from specific communications or all email.
If you send contacts to the preference centre when they click Unsubscribe, you cannot also add a separate preference centre link in your email.
Custom preference centre (Surveys, pages, and forms)
A branded page you build yourself. Best for showing preferences and data fields. Lists aren’t supported here; you can use automation to map responses to lists.
You can add an unsubscribe option to a Dotdigital page, but this feature can't be combined with form functionality.
Creative‑built custom page
If you want a fully-branded, bespoke unsubscribe page, our Creative team can work with you to create this.
This is a chargeable service. Contact your Customer Success representative to start the process.
Which option to use
Goal | Use this |
Fast, automatically compliant one‑click opt‑out | Default Unsubscribe page |
Let contacts choose what they opt in for and update details | Default preference centre |
Branded preferences without lists | Custom preference centre using Surveys, pages, and forms |
Host on your domain and manage email/SMS unsubscribe | Customised unsubscribe form |
Fully bespoke experience | Creative‑built custom |
Configure unsubscribe and preference centre behaviour
Expand the User menu and go to Settings > General > Account settings.
Under Unsubscribe and preference centre settings:
Expand the When a contact requests to unsubscribe drop-down menu and select the behaviour you want for the Unsubscribe link:
Show the unsubscribe page.
Show the preference centre chosen below.
Expand the When a contact requests to change marketing preferences drop-down menu and select the behaviour you want for the Preference centre link:
Show the default preference centre
Show a custom preference centre on a URL
Enter the URL that holds your customer preference centre.Show a custom preference centre on a page
Expand the drop-down menu and select the page that holds your customer preference centre.
Select SAVE SETTINGS.
Further information
You can make it easy for contacts to opt out of SMS with a personalised link in your messages.
The default Unsubscribe page and preference centre automatically display in the contact’s browser language, the platform supports 21 languages.