For subscription management systems, providing email subscribers the opportunity to temporarily suppress the subscription can reduce or avoid the automatic creation of duplicate records for the same subscriber if the user unsubscribes and later re-subscribes. This reduces storage space requirements and reduces computing resources needed for searching or indexing the database storing information about the subscriptions and subscribers. For a system managing email subscriptions for tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of subscribers, the reduction of storage and computational resources achieved by embodiments described herein can be significant. Further, because duplicate records are avoided or minimized, the need for running separate software to detect and remove duplicate records in the system is reduced or eliminated, thereby further reducing the computing and memory usage.

As used herein, the term “email subscription” is used to refer to an arrangement for a user (subscriber) to continuously receive emails containing content about a certain topic. For example, an email subscription service may deliver emails containing information associated with an entity and/or a product or service provided by the entity. A product can include, for example, merchandise made or sold by the entity. Services can include news service, media content distribution service, and so on. Emails sent through a subscription service may provide newsletters or updates regarding sales, coupons, special events, etc. Users or subscribers with an “active subscription” continuously receive the emails. Users or subscribers with a “suppressed subscription” do not receive the emails until the subscription becomes active.