List cleanup that runs on its own

Who it is for

• Indie founders whose waitlist from two years ago is now half dead addresses and people who forgot they signed up.
• Creators running a newsletter who would rather send to 8,000 readers who open than 12,000 who mostly do not.
• SaaS teams sending product updates whose product updates go to every past trial user and slowly drag their sender reputation down.
• Agencies who keep client lists healthy without exporting and pruning them by hand every quarter.

How it works

1. Spot quiet readers. A reader qualifies after a number of issues in a row with no open or click (6 by default, from 3 to 50) and no engagement for a quiet period (90 days by default, from 30 to 730).
2. Ask once. They get one short email, “Do you still want these emails?” by default, with a button to stay subscribed. You can change the subject, text and sender.
3. Wait a week. Readers who press the button stay as they were. The keep page needs a button press, not just a visit, so a link scanner cannot keep everyone subscribed.
4. Mark the rest dormant. After 7 days without an answer, they become dormant: still on your list, not deleted, not sent issues. If a dormant reader later opens or clicks an older issue, they become active again.

Cleanup checks run every hour and are on by default. You can turn them off or change the thresholds in Newsletter settings.

Why it protects your deliverability

Your newsletter shares sending reputation with your own domain and with the platform. Sending to people who never open adds nothing and costs you in two ways: they are more likely to mark you as spam, and the share of readers who engage goes down. A smaller, interested list is easier to keep in the inbox.

Cleanup works alongside the other guardrails: hard bounces, complaints and unsubscribes are suppressed automatically, signup forms use double opt-in, new workspaces ramp from 100 to 50,000 emails a day, and a sender is paused when 7-day complaints reach 0.1% or hard bounces reach 10%. See deliverability for the full rules.

Seeing who is dormant

• Filter contacts by the dormant status, and export them; the CSV marks them as dormant.
• The campaigns overview counts active, pending and dormant readers.
• Segments can target readers by sends in a row without an open, if you want your own win-back issue before cleanup asks them.

From the API and your AI agent

Ask an agent to tighten or relax cleanup for your list. The same features are in the REST API under /api/v1, the sendhq CLI, and the MCP server, so Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor can do this work for you through the hosted connector at https://mcp.sendhq.cc/mcp. See the campaigns API reference.

# Ask after 8 unopened issues and 120 quiet days, with your own wording
curl https://sendhq.cc/api/v1/newsletter-settings -X PATCH \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SENDHQ_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"cleanup":{"enabled":true,"afterSends":8,"quietDays":120,"subject":"Still want Weekly Notes?"}}'

Honest limits

• Apple Mail Privacy Protection opens are filtered out as machine activity, so a reader who reads only in Apple Mail and never clicks can look quiet. That is why cleanup asks first instead of removing anyone.
• The check-in emails are sent like any other email and count toward your monthly allowance.
• Cleanup needs a sender: the one you set for it, or the sender of your most recent issue.

Questions