Consent & subscriptions

Before every send, Instasent asks itself one question: are you allowed to message this contact on this channel? The answer is decided by two independent axes, tracked per channel — and they really are independent: a contact can accept marketing on SMS and be unreachable on WhatsApp, or opt out of marketing yet still get a service notification. Keeping the two axes apart is exactly what lets "I don't want promotions" mean something different from "don't contact me at all."

The two axes

Every contact carries, on each channel, two pieces of consent state:

Axis	What it answers	Default
Marketing preference	Does the contact accept marketing on this channel?	No preference
Channel suppression	Is the contact suppressed from everything on this channel?	Subscribed

• Marketing preference is a three-state value: the contact has accepted marketing (opted in), declined it (opted out), or has no preference recorded yet. A new contact, or one imported without consent data, starts with no preference — neither a yes nor a no.
• Channel suppression is the harder line. A suppressed contact is removed from all marketing on that channel, whatever their marketing preference says. It's reserved for the strongest signals — a repeated opt-out, a manual block — and, unlike the marketing preference, a contact can't lift their own suppression.

These are two separate axes, not two values on a scale. A contact who declined marketing is still subscribed (active) on the channel — they simply don't get marketing. A contact who is suppressed gets nothing, no matter what their marketing preference is.

Where you see them: Channel preferences

On a contact's profile, the Channel preferences card shows both axes, one row per channel — SMS / RCS, Email and WhatsApp — with two columns:

• Subscribed — the suppression checkbox. When you clear it, the contact is suppressed: removed from all marketing on the channel.
• Accepts marketing — the marketing preference, a three-state checkbox: checked (opted in), unchecked (opted out) or indeterminate, shown as No preference when no value has been recorded yet.

The card's own help text spells out what each checkbox means. Subscribed is described as "Total channel suppression. Turn it off and the contact stops receiving anything on this channel, including sends with the Basic consent policy. Only your team or the API can reverse it." And Accepts marketing notes that "Only affects sends with the Opt-in or Opt-out consent policy. Sends with the Basic policy still arrive as long as the contact remains subscribed. The contact usually changes it themselves via STOP/START or an unsubscribe link."

How the model connects to the rest of Instasent

Consent is a connection point: several parts of the panel read or write these two axes, but the model itself is explained here. Read on for each piece:

Two boundaries worth stating up front, so you look in the right place:

• Campaign policies (Basic, Opt-out, Opt-in) — which contacts a campaign reaches and what a STOP does under each policy — are in Compliance policies.
• Per-channel defaults — the consent policy a new campaign starts from, the inbound keywords, and per-channel vs global opt-out scope — are in Compliance.

To manage consent programmatically, see Manage via API.