I learned about Unsubscribe.com, from Fred Wilson’s recent post about how he works towards achieving Inbox Zero. I don’t use GMail as my main client, preferring to currently use Apple Mail after I ditched Thunderbird earlier this year. However, most of my email accounts are now based on GMail, thanks to the wonders of Google Apps for Domains.
Unsubscribe is exactly what I’ve been after. I get subscribed to a lot of mailing lists and instead of marking things as spam (sometimes in my MUA, sometimes on GMail), I’d rather just get off the mailing list so it does not clog up Google’s servers. Another problem is that my oldest email account is now fifteen years old, so it tends to get clogged up with quite a lot of crap.
Signing up was easy. Installing the plugin for Firefox was also easy. Hitting the limit of five email unsubscribes per month was dead easy! I had to quickly grab my credit card and get the limit lifted (if only they offered Paypal as an option).
I ended up using it in a mixed-mode environment. I tried to use it in the browser for some of my various Google Apps for Domains accounts. It worked a charm. Then I moved back to my MUA, and started forwarding emails to mail@unsubscribe.com. That too, worked a charm. One click (and one forward) unsubscribe is just too easy.
Considering I have too many email accounts and not all of them have GMail access, I had to write their support line a quick email. Within a few hours, they fixed my problem – they whitelisted all my email addresses, and if I need more, they’ll gladly whitelist more. They also told me that they’re working on an interface to allow users to add their own email addresses.
Service within a few hours. Absolutely love it. Can smell that they are a great startup to watch. Well worth the USD$19/year fee.
Update: In the 2 days that I’ve been using it, on day 1 I got off 78 mailing lists, and on day 2 another 51.