Unsubscribe.com raises $2.1M

The company offers a service that allows users to unsubscribe from any mailing list with one click

I periodically go through phases where I suddenly get motivated to work out and eat better.  They never last very long. (I’ve charted the pattern and the weak point in the trajectory is always the part where I swear off weekday-drinking, or commit to only drinking socially. Ha!)  Nevertheless, they always end the same way: I suddenly find my inbox flooded with health-oriented newsletters that I subscribed to while in my health-crazed delirium (it’s like waking up from a bad dream and realizing you were sleepwalking).  A new company called Unsubscribe.com offers a solution to that problem and they have just received a vote of confidence from Charles Rivers Ventures in a $2.1 million Series A round.  Additional investors include Ron Conway’s SV Angel, First Round Capital, DFJ Frontier, and angels Matt Coffin, Tim Ferriss, and Matt Brezina.

Unsubscribe.com does exactly what its name suggests: it allows you to unsubscribe from marketing lists.  By downloading an email extension, the service adds an “unsubscribe” button to every email, so that a user need only click the button and unsubscribe.com takes care of the dirty work. 

At present, the service only supports Gmail and Outlook, but it plans to add Yahoo, Hotmail, and AOL to its platform in the near future.  Until then, users from one of those services can simply forward an unwanted email to mail@unsubscribe.com (but you have to set up an account on unsubscribe.com first).  Users are allowed five free unsubscribes per month, or they can pay $20 per year for unlimited use.  That’s good news if you go through multiple phases at a time (the get-healthy phase, the do-gooder phase, the eco-conscious phase, etc. etc.).

Unsubscribe.com was created by James Siminoff, who you might remember as the founder of Phone Tag/Simulscribe, a service that transcribes voice messages.  Siminoff defines the service as “email hygienics.”

“Currently people use the delete or spam button for emails that they receive from mailing lists that they do not want,” Siminoff explained to reporters in a recent interview. “This creates two big issues; it puts good companies on blacklists, and when people use delete they continue to receive emails.”

VC Fred Wilson has some nice things to say about the service:  “I didn't even bother with the free offer. I paid $19 the minute I saw this service and to date I have unsubscribed to roughly 125 mailing lists with the click of a button… The thing I like most about it is that it doesn't filter the email away or send it to spam. It stops the mail from being sent.”

The Santa Monica, Calif.-based startup was founded in May 2010 with an undisclosed amount of seed funding, contributed by Siminoff, co-founder and COO Joshua Roth, and Will Schroter.

Unsubscribe.com could not be reached for comment.

Image source: unsubscribe.com