Platform Playbooks

    Klaviyo Inactive Profiles: How to Find Them, What They Cost, and Whether to Suppress or Reactivate

    By Artem KukharenkoPublished Updated 10 min read

    Updated 17 October 2026. Based on Klaviyo's help center documentation and benchmark data as of this date.

    Active, suppressed and unsubscribed envelope states connect as three nodes
    Original editorial illustration of the article’s process; no third-party interface is depicted.

    Active, suppressed, unsubscribed: what each state means

    Scroll for more → On small screens, choose cards for wide tables.

    State Receives marketing email? Counts toward billing? How a profile gets there How it leaves
    Active Yes (if consented or added through engagement such as checkout) Yes Signup form, checkout, import, API Suppression or unsubscribe
    Suppressed No No Manual or bulk suppression; automatic after a hard bounce or >7 consecutive soft bounces; suppression inherited from a previous provider Unsuppress (manual)
    Unsubscribed No No Recipient clicks unsubscribe or updates preferences Re-subscribes through a form

    Two details from Klaviyo's documentation worth repeating. First, suppressing a profile manually "does not change their consent status," so a suppressed subscriber who later re-engages can be unsuppressed without a new opt-in. Second, "active" includes people who never explicitly subscribed but gave an email at checkout; they can receive marketing email under Klaviyo's rules and they are billed.

    Community threads add a wrinkle: some users report that other Klaviyo products or plan types count profiles differently (for example, CDP billing on total profiles). Klaviyo's pricing page says unsubscribed and suppressed contacts don't count toward the email plan. Check your own Billing page rather than relying on either.

    Klaviyo profile state and email billingActiveBillable; may be dormant→SuppressedExcluded from email billing→UnsubscribedExcluded from email billing
    Klaviyo profile state and email billing

    Klaviyo's own thresholds for "unengaged" and "suppress"

    Klaviyo's help article on active profile management draws a line between two goals that teams usually blur.

    Deliverability goal → exclude, don't suppress. Build an "Unengaged Subscriber" segment of profiles that received at least 5 emails and have not opened or clicked in 90 days, and exclude it from campaign sends. These profiles stay active and billed; the point is to stop mailing people whose silence is pulling your engagement rate down.

    Cost and hygiene goal → sunset, then suppress. Build a suppression-candidate segment with all of these conditions: can receive email marketing and has an email set; created at least 180 days ago; received at least 5 emails in the last 72 weeks; and zero opens, clicks, site visits, product views, checkouts and orders over all time. Klaviyo recommends running a sunset flow to this segment and suppressing those who do not respond.

    The gap between 90 days and "180 days plus zero lifetime engagement" is deliberate. It is where reactivation lives.

    Build the segments step by step

    Unengaged (exclude from bulk sends)

    1. Lists & Segments → Create Segment.
    2. Condition: What someone has done → Received Email → at least 5 times → over all time (or in the last 72 weeks, to match Klaviyo's guidance).
    3. AND: What someone has done → Opened Email → zero times → in the last 90 days.
    4. AND: What someone has done → Clicked Email → zero times → in the last 90 days.
    5. Name it "Unengaged 90d" and exclude it from every campaign send and from high-frequency flows.

    Suppression candidates (sunset flow, then suppress)

    1. Condition: Properties about someone → Can receive email marketing is true; Email is set.
    2. AND: Properties about someone → Created → at least 180 days ago.
    3. AND: Received Email → at least 5 times → in the last 72 weeks.
    4. AND: Opened Email, Clicked Email, Active on Site, Viewed Product, Started Checkout, Placed Order → each zero times → over all time.
    5. Name it "Suppression candidates." Do not suppress it yet.

    Dormant but valuable (reactivation candidates)

    1. Condition: Placed Order at least once over all time.
    2. AND: Opened Email zero times AND Clicked Email zero times in the last 180 days.
    3. AND: Can receive email marketing is true.
    4. Name it "Dormant buyers." These are the first people to revive, and the last to suppress.

    Exact condition labels vary slightly by account and over time; the logic above is what matters.

    Exclude, sunset, suppress, or revive: the decision table

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    Segment Lifetime engagement Consent Action
    Unengaged 90d, has purchased or clicked before Yes Yes Exclude from bulk sends; put in a reactivation stream (1/30 daily cohorts); do not suppress
    Unengaged 90d, never purchased, clicked long ago Yes Yes Exclude from bulk sends; reactivation stream with re-engagement copy; sunset if no response
    Suppression candidates (180d+, zero lifetime engagement) None Yes Sunset flow (2–3 emails), then suppress non-responders
    Checkout-added, never consented explicitly, never engaged None Implied only Re-permission email once, then suppress
    Bounced or complained (auto-suppressed) — — Leave suppressed; never re-import

    What inactive profiles cost you

    Klaviyo bills on active profiles in tiers. The method:

    1. Open Billing and note your current active profile count and plan price.
    2. Count your suppression candidates (zero lifetime engagement) and your Unengaged 90d segment.
    3. Find the plan tier you would land on after suppressing the candidates alone, and after suppressing candidates plus unengaged. Note both prices.
    4. Multiply each saving by 12.

    Klaviyo pricing as of 17 October 2026 (USD per month, email only; optional products excluded):

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    Active profiles Monthly email price Included monthly emails
    55,000 $790 550,000
    85,000 $1,205 850,000
    100,000 $1,380 1,000,000

    For the same illustrative account with 100,000 active profiles, 15,000 suppression candidates and another 30,000 unengaged profiles: moving from 100k to 85k saves ($1,380 − $1,205) × 12 = $2,100 a year if the lower plan is applied for all 12 months. Moving to 55k would save ($1,380 − $790) × 12 = $7,080 a year, but removing previously engaged readers can forfeit revenue. A bill reduction is not evidence that suppression is safe. These are standard public email quotes, not a prediction of your invoice.

    Find out how many of your Klaviyo profiles are actually recoverable. The free List Health Audit scans your dormant segment for bounces, traps and dead domains, maps dormancy by tier and estimates recoverable revenue, within 72 hours. Get the free audit for your Klaviyo account →

    Why full-list sends hurt deliverability in Klaviyo

    A Klaviyo Community thread from July 2025 describes the dilemma exactly: a sender reported that mailing the full list hurt deliverability, that mailing only engaged subscribers improved it, and that the engaged-only approach cut revenue. Both observations are correct, and they are why "send to everyone" and "send only to engaged" are both wrong answers.

    The mechanics: Gmail's spam-rate limit is 0.30% (three reports per thousand delivered), with a 0.10% target. A full-list send to a base with 30–40% unengaged profiles produces complaints from people who forgot they subscribed and bounces from addresses that died quietly. The resulting reputation hit lands on your engaged recipients too.

    Two Klaviyo-specific points. Klaviyo’s branded-domain help, checked 17 October 2026, makes every company eligible and connects branded sending domains to authentication requirements. The 5,000 reference is messages to Google accounts per day, not stored profiles. Use a branded domain with DMARC alignment; the help page does not establish a 5,000-profile recommendation. And Klaviyo's automatic suppression after a hard bounce or seven consecutive soft bounces means a full-list send permanently removes addresses that a slower approach might have kept.

    Reviving dormant profiles inside Klaviyo without migrating

    Everything in the reactivation playbook can be built with segments and a daily send:

    1. Eligibility. Start from "Dormant buyers" and the unengaged with a click or purchase in the last 36 months. Exclude anyone suppressed, bounced or complained in any system, and anyone whose source you cannot document.
    2. Scan. Run the segment through a verification and trap scan before the first send. Suppress undeliverable, dead-domain and trap-like addresses.
    3. Daily cohorts. Create a "Revival cohort" segment with a rotating condition (for example, a custom property revival_day set 1–30 at import, or a profile-created-date window) and send the same re-engagement email to 1/30 of the segment each day.
    4. Stop conditions. Before day one, write them down: hard bounces above 2% of a cohort → stop; complaints at or above 0.10% → pause 48 hours; at or above 0.30% → stop; any authentication failure → stop. Klaviyo's campaign reports show bounces and spam complaints per send.
    5. Measure. Freeze the cohort as a static list at the start, and read clicks, placed orders and revenue for that list at 45 and 90 days. Do not use open rate; Klaviyo's own open benchmarks are inflated by Apple Mail's privacy proxy like everyone else's.
    6. Then sunset. Profiles that did not click or buy in the stream go to the sunset flow, and after that to suppression.

    Benchmarks to judge "normal"

    Klaviyo's 2026 benchmarks, drawn from over 183,000 Klaviyo customers:

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    Metric "Good" (median-ish) Top 10% of brands
    Campaign open rate 31% 45.1%
    Flow open rate 32.2% 45.8%
    Campaign click rate 1.69% 3.38%
    Flow click rate 5.58% 10.48%
    Share of email revenue from flows ~41% (from 5.3% of sends) —
    Placed-order rate, flows vs campaigns ~13× higher for flows —

    The flow numbers are the argument for reactivation done well: a profile that engages is worth many times a profile that merely exists. Revenue per recipient for flows is reported by Klaviyo as nearly 18× that of campaigns.

    FAQ

    Does Klaviyo charge for inactive profiles? Active profiles are billed whether or not they engage. Suppressed and unsubscribed profiles are not billed on the email plan, per Klaviyo's pricing page and help center. Check your Billing page for your account's exact count.

    Should I delete suppressed profiles? Usually not. A suppressed profile is a record of an address you must not mail; deleting it means a later import can bring it back. Delete only on a data-subject request or under a retention policy.

    Can suppressed profiles still trigger flows? Suppressed profiles cannot receive marketing email from Klaviyo. Check Klaviyo's current documentation for how transactional messages are handled for suppressed profiles, since that depends on message type and account settings.

    How do I bulk suppress in Klaviyo? Open the list or segment, choose "Suppress current members." You need the Owner, Admin or Manager role. Suppressing does not change consent status.

    What's a good open rate in Klaviyo? Klaviyo's 2026 benchmarks put a good campaign open rate at 31% and a good flow open rate at 32.2%, with the top 10% of brands above 45%. Treat opens as directional because of Apple Mail Privacy Protection, and judge on clicks and orders.

    Will suppressing inactive profiles hurt revenue? It can. Klaviyo's guidance warns that profiles suppressed too early may have returned later. Suppress only profiles with zero lifetime engagement after a sunset flow; run a measured reactivation stream on everyone else first.

    Start with the free audit for your Klaviyo list. Scan, dormancy map, domain risk score and recoverable-revenue estimate in 72 hours. No migration. Get the free audit →

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    Sources

    Cite this page

    Klaviyo Inactive Profiles: How to Find Them, What They Cost, and Whether to Suppress or Reactivate. Artem Kukharenko. EngageMKTG. 2026-10-17. https://engagemktg.com/knowledge/klaviyo-inactive-profiles

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