Restoring deleted subscribers and lists
If you have accidentally deleted subscribers or an entire list, you can restore them yourself for up to 30 days. The 30-day period starts from the moment of deletion. If you delete a restored subscriber again, the period starts over. After 30 days, subscribers and lists are permanently erased, and the helpdesk will no longer be able to retrieve them either.
Restoring deleted subscribers
Go to ‘Subscribers’, click ‘View’ next to the list, and open the ‘deleted’ tab. Here you will find the subscribers who have been deleted from this list over the past 30 days, with the most recently deleted at the top. For each subscriber, you can see when they were deleted (‘Deleted at’) and until when you can still restore them (‘Restorable until’).
There are four ways to restore them:
- One or more subscribers: tick the subscribers and click ‘Restore selection’.
- All at once: click ‘Restore all’ below the table. All subscribers on the tab will then be restored, for example after you have accidentally emptied a list.
- A selection: search, or filter by a label or segment. Then click ‘Restore all found subscribers’ to only restore the subscribers within your selection.
- From the subscriber profile itself: click on a deleted subscriber. You will see their details (these cannot be edited). Click ‘Restore’.
If it involves more than 500 subscribers, the restoration will take place in the background and you can simply continue working. If you have deleted a subscriber from multiple lists at the same time, you will need to restore them for each list individually.
What happens when you restore a subscriber?
A restored subscriber returns just as they were: with the same status (active, unsubscribed, cleaned, or unconfirmed), all details, labels, and selections for multiple-choice fields, and the same subscriber number. A connection via the API will therefore recognise the subscriber again. The ‘Restored’ line will be added to the subscriber’s history.
When restoring a subscriber, the following rules apply:
- No welcome email or confirmation email is sent.
- No automation is triggered, not even an automation that starts upon subscription. A restored subscriber will also not continue in an automation that was running while the subscriber was deleted.
- Campaigns that were sent in the meantime will not be sent to the subscriber retrospectively.
- No webhook is called, so a connection that uses webhooks will not be notified of the restoration.
- If you restore an unsubscribed or cleaned subscriber, the list’s retention period for that subscriber will start counting from the beginning again.
Why is it not possible to restore a subscriber?
After restoring, you will see how many subscribers have been put back. If a subscriber was skipped, the reason will be shown. There are two reasons for this:
- The address is already in the list. The address was added to the list again after being deleted, for instance through an import or a subscription. An address can only appear in a list once, so the old subscriber remains deleted. If the same address appears more than once under ‘deleted’, only the most recently deleted one will be restored.
- The address is blocked for this list. The address was added to the list again after being deleted, then unsubscribed or cleaned, and subsequently erased by a retention period. If you still want the address back in the list, add it via ‘Add new subscriber’.
Unsubscribed and cleaned subscribers that have been deleted due to a retention period do not appear under ‘deleted’. They are permanently erased straight away.
Restoring deleted lists
If you have deleted a list, the heading ‘Deleted’ will appear at the bottom of the ‘Subscribers’ page, below your lists. There you can see the name, the number of active subscribers, the date of deletion, and the date until which you can restore the list for each list. Click ‘Restore’ next to the list.
The list will be returned with all subscribers just as they were. The list’s fields, segments, forms, welcome and confirmation emails, and webhooks will also work again. An embedded subscription form on your website will reappear, unless you disabled it yourself.
Please note these five points when restoring a list:
- Automations remain paused. Automations that use the list are paused upon deletion and remain so to prevent emails from being sent unexpectedly. Turn them back on yourself if needed.
- Scheduled campaigns will be sent again. If a campaign is scheduled for this list, it will be sent as normal after the restoration. You will receive a notification about this when you confirm the restoration.
- Individually deleted subscribers keep their own retention period. Subscribers that you had already deleted individually before deleting the list will remain under ‘deleted’ in the list, with their own 30-day period.
- You cannot restore the subscribers individually. The subscribers of a deleted list can only be put back by restoring the entire list.
- You cannot restore a locked list. You cannot put back individual subscribers in a locked list either.
Can you restore subscribers and lists via the API?
Restoring can only be done within Laposta itself, not via the API. If you request a subscriber’s history via the API, the restoration is called restored there.