Understanding how contacts are billed helps you avoid unexpected charges and manage your data more effectively.
Dotdigital bills based on the highest number of marketable contacts in your account during a billing period. This includes contacts who are subscribed, sent to, or suppressed at the contact level.
How we determine which contacts are chargeable
An account is charged for contacts that:
are subscribed on at least one channel when the bill run happens.
Currently, available channels are email, SMS, and WhatsApp.
were deleted or suppressed at a contact level during the billing period, but were either sent to during that period or created before it.
Suppressed at contact level means the contact is suppressed across all channels you hold data for.
Billing is based on the peak number of contacts in your account during the billing period. This includes contacts who were sent to, even if they were later deleted or suppressed.
Contacts that are imported but not sent to, and then permanently deleted within the same billing period, aren't billed. For example, if you accidentally upload a list and delete it before sending, you won’t be charged.
Once permanently deleted, contacts can’t be recovered or viewed in your account.
Upload new contacts
Dotdigital considers a contact to be a person you can market to. When you upload new contacts, they’re assigned the Subscribed status by default.
If you send to new contacts through an email double opt‑in program and they haven’t confirmed their subscription, they’re assigned the Pending status.
Pending contacts aren’t billable until they complete the opt‑in process, unless they’re already subscribed on another channel.
Suppressed contacts and billing
Dotdigital bills contacts based on their marketable status across email, SMS, and WhatsApp channels. To be excluded from billing, a contact must be fully suppressed on all active channels.
Contacts suppressed on email, SMS, and WhatsApp are not billable.
Contacts with at least one marketable channel, such as subscribed to SMS but suppressed on email, are billable.
Contacts suppressed only at the list level and not at the contact level are also billable.
Learn more in Add and remove suppressions from a list.
Dotdigital uses the email and mobilenumberID system fields to determine a contact’s subscription and suppression status.
Contacts with email addresses or phone numbers stored in custom fields are not considered marketable and cannot be used for sending. These contacts are not counted for billing purposes unless their data is mapped to the correct system fields.