Set up double opt-in on a list

Contacts, lists & segmentsUpdated

Make signups confirm by email before they're subscribed: it's a list setting, and it needs a verified sending domain.

Open Lists, click the list, click Edit list, and under Signup confirmation tick Double opt-in. From then on, anyone who joins that list through a signup form is created as pending and gets an email asking them to confirm. They become subscribed when they click the button in it.

Double opt-in belongs to the list, not the form. Every form pointing at that list confirms; a form pointing at a different list doesn’t. For one form to confirm and another not to, use different lists.

Turn it on

  1. Lists → your list → Edit list.
  2. Under Signup confirmation, tick Double opt-in.
  3. Click Save.

What it needs first

The confirmation email sends from your own address, so before a signup form on a double opt-in list can go live you need:

Without both, publishing the form is refused with a message saying so, and turning the toggle on is refused if live forms already feed the list. See Why my double opt-in form won’t go live.

What a signup looks like

  1. Someone submits your form and sees a “check your email” message.
  2. The contact is created as pending, with a pending membership of the list. Pending contacts are never sent campaigns and don’t count towards your plan’s contact limit.
  3. They get an email with the subject “Confirm your subscription to your sender name” and a confirm button, from your own from address.
  4. Clicking it subscribes them, applies any tags the form sets, and records the confirmation against their signup.

The confirmation link is good for seven days. Submitting the form again resends it, with a short cooldown. The contact’s page shows all of this under Signup consent: when they submitted, when they confirmed, the IP address, the page they signed up on and the exact consent wording they were shown.

Why turn it on

Turn it on for any form the general public can reach. Without confirmation, anyone can type someone else’s address into your form and start you mailing a stranger; a confirmation click is also the strongest consent proof you can hold, and confirmed addresses bounce and complain far less.

It’s the single highest-value setting on this page.

Confirmation on a single opt-in list

Even with double opt-in off, some signups are escalated to a confirmation rather than subscribed on the spot (an address that had previously unsubscribed, for instance). A form post can never resurrect an opt-out, so we ask the person themselves. That’s why the Grow page can show a warning badge about blocked confirmations even for single opt-in lists: if your account can’t send confirmation email, those signups are being turned away silently.

Turning it off

Untick the box and save. Contacts already pending stay pending: they haven’t consented yet. They’ll subscribe if they click their link, or sit as pending until you delete them.

Where to go next