Pinterest Account Suspended? Me Too. Here’s What To Do

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Last Updated on January 13, 2023 by Bert-Jan Schilthuis-Ihrig

It’s the *worst* feeling: you open Pinterest, like any other day, and see that your Pinterest account is suspended for no reason. You feel panicked, upset, wonder what you did wrong, but you come up with nothing.

Your Pinterest account was seemingly suspended for no reason. Sadly, you’re in excellent company: speaking from personal experience, Pinterest has mistakenly suspended many accounts as spam, and is not interested in helping you get your account back.

But I am.

I spent months talking to other people who, like me, experienced an inaccurate account suspension and wanted to know what options they had. After successfully bringing two Pinterest accounts back from incorrect suspension, it feels like time to put this all down in one place so that it can help the next poor schmuck who finds themselves at the wrong end of an automated suspension.

Just to be clear: are we having the right conversation? Pinterest account suspension means that you cannot log in to your account, create content, etc. You will get an error message when you try to access your account. This is not to be confused with the Pinterest spam block. If you still have access to your Pinterest account and are just seeing terrible results, the Pinterest spam blocker is the problem you need to solve. 

My Experience With Pinterest Account Suspension 

This blog post about having your Pinterest account suspended for no reason is written from my experiences as a creator on Pinterest and as a Pinterest manager. 

As a creator or a Pinterest manager, I would never, ever commit spam on Pinterest. Yet, in 2020 (shakes fist at sky), two of the accounts that I managed were suspended incorrectly.

Both were mistakes on Pinterest’s end. Both were incredibly stressful. 

Once account took *months* to come back. It was suspended around Halloween, and I put in a help ticket every few days until January, when it quietly was reactivated one day without even a “sorry” or “welcome back.” 

It was so stressful, and so much of the advice that I read online was “if you ACTUALLY weren’t committing spam, it would’ve come back right away.” 

That is simply not true about Pinterest, or at least, not true anymore. Reading this advice added gasoline to my anxiety and stress bonfire, so I’m sharing my experience and insights in hopes to save you some heartbreak and give you actionable steps out of your Pinterest account suspension. 

If we were having this conversation in person, I’d like to start it out with a hug and maybe 2 shots of tequila. Each. 

Anyway, where do we begin? 

Pinterest Account Suspended? Answers To All Your Questions

First things first, how do you know when your Pinterest account is suspended?

What Happens When Pinterest Suspends My Account?

There are two potential scenarios: either you see the suspension happen in real-time, or you get notified.

If You’re On Pinterest At The Moment Of Suspension

Like an unwelcomed apparition, a message will suddenly appear on your screen telling you that you’ve been suspended. The devil himself, in the flesh. You will be unable to use Pinterest further – not to browse, not to see your account, not to make changes. 

How this looked for me: I had just started a Pinterest account for a new client. She was a part of an MLM and I went to the corporate account for this company and clicked “follow.” The screen blinked, and then I got a message saying that this Pinterest account was suspended for spam. I also received an email. I followed the steps to appeal, and the account was reinstated the next day. 

If you’re not using the platform, you’ll get an email.

The “You’ve Been Suspended” Email

If you’re not on the platform, you will get an email saying that your account was suspended for committing spam. There will be a link to click and appeal this. 

In either of these scenarios, you will not be able to log in to your account in any capacity. Likewise, you cannot create a new business account and try to link up to your website. Your website is banned from the platform until this is resolved. 

Why Did Pinterest Suspend My Account? 

Let’s look at the two main reasons Pinterest may have suspended your account. 

1. You Actually Were Committing Spam 

Were you accidentally committing spam? You don’t have to be ashamed to say yes. We all know some bloggers or online business owners who have bought Instagram followers, paid for people to watch their YouTube videos, or acquired emails on their email lists in an un-kosher way. 

You may also like: How To Get More Pinterest Followers

You’re looking for “hacks,” and sometimes you aren’t familiar enough with a platform to realize that something is against the rules. 

Some of the most common accidental spam behaviors on Pinterest that I’ve seen are: 

• Posting a pin for the same URL every single day (read here to learn how to upload multiple pins the right way) 
• Uploading the same image and URL combo more than once (this is duplicate content, which is never good for SEO algorithms) 
• Sending random people your pins via direct message, totally unsolicited 
• Simply using really outdated best practices that are associated with spam now, such as using a lot of hashtags, or repinning a very high number of pins per day 

Or, sadly, one of the worst mistakes that I see are people hiring Pinterest managers or Pinterest virtual assistants (PVA) that don’t follow best practices. Before hiring a Pinterest manager, hear this advice to help save you from the stress of hiring a Pinterest manager that doesn’t know the rules. 

Having accidentally committed spam is not necessarily an end-all for your account. Tell them that you made a mistake in your help ticket and they may be sympathetic. Remember that you have nothing to lose here.

2. Your Pinterest Account Was Suspended For No Reason (Glitch) 

This is way more common than you would expect. 

Pinterest, if you’re reading: what the heck?! There’s never been more spam on Pinterest, yet legitimate creator accounts are constantly in fear of the latest bug-filled algorithm update. Account suspensions are serious, and it shouldn’t be a humanless process because your automated system is full of errors.

The glitch could be affecting only your account, or it could be widespread.

Sometimes accounts are suspended as a part of a system-wide glitch on Pinterest’s end (such as the Great Wave Of Inaccurate Suspensions in June of 2021). This is the fastest type of suspension to have fixed because hundreds or thousands of accounts are affected at once, resulting in a panic on Pinterest’s end and immediate rectification. 

The worse type of glitch is just a good ole’ fashioned algorithm glitch that suspended just your Pinterest account for no reason. Let’s talk about how to win it back.

How Do I Get My Suspended Pinterest Account Back? 

It’s likely that someone from Pinterest will not read all of your help tickets. They might not read any of them. Yet, you have to submit help tickets until you talk to a human otherwise the suspension will never be lifted. Here are some troubleshooting tips for submitting all of those help tickets, and we’ll talk about the exact steps to take in a minute.

As you’re corresponding with Pinterest, remember these tips:

• Keep persisting until you talk to a human or see your account come back. Always copy/paste your message somewhere on your computer so that you don’t become even more frustrated by having to type it all out again every day
• Be *extremely* nice. Pinterest ignores most help tickets. Being rude won’t make them any more inclined to answer yours. Anyway, the person you’re talking to has nothing to do with the algorithm that automatically suspends accounts incorrectly
• Thank them for the reaction that you hope to see. This is a psychological trick! ~science~ By thanking someone for their patience/time/attention, they’re more likely to give you those things
• Don’t waste time looking for answers about why your Pinterest account was suspended for no reason that you can see. Sadly, Pinterest does not owe you (and will NOT give you) a reason for your Pinterest account being suspended. Given my experience, they won’t give you the time of day.

You know who they will give the time of day? Advertisers (it’ll make sense in 20 seconds).

Quick pause: Pinterest shouldn’t be ANY single brand’s single source of traffic. It’s always the right time to bone up on your Google optimization. If you need some help, you can use my guide:

How To Submit A Help Ticket When Your Account Has Been Suspended

Typically, to submit a help ticket on Pinterest, you’d go to the help center via the “?” icon in the bottom right-hand corner of your account. When you’re suspended, though, you have to enter the help center’s address directly: https://help.pinterest.com/en

How To Get Your Suspended Pinterest Account Back

The best tip to recover from a Pinterest account suspension is to dress up as the only demographic Pinterest seems to care about post-2020.

But sure, start with the standard help ticket (feel free to copy/paste and use this yourself):

Hello Pinterest team! My Pinterest account was mistakenly suspended for spam, but I assure you I’ve never intentionally committed spam on your platform. I’m an active, honest part of the creator community on Pinterest. I regularly provide new, original content for pinners to enjoy. I’ve been striving towards building an audience there on the platform itself. If anything underhanded came from my account, please know that it was a mistake. I would never try to cheat the system. Please, please have a human review my account and reinstate it. Thank you so much for your attention – Pinterest is so important to my brand. 

Put that help ticket in here:

After a few weeks of trying that help ticket, go for the big guns and pull the advertiser card:

Hi Pinterest team, I desperately need someone to help me. My account was mistakenly suspended for spam. I’ve never committed spam on Pinterest, and never would – I cherish the creator code and believe that the pinners deserve the absolute best that we can provide. I really need to talk to someone about this because I have an ads campaign that I wanted to roll out next month. Please help get my account back so that I can serve the pinners again and become a part of the Pinterest advertisers community. Thank you so much for your time and help.

Put that help ticket in here:

Do this for as long as it takes. Tweak the help tickets slightly after a while in case they have a bot that filters out repetitive emails.

How Long Does It Take For A Mistakenly Suspended Pinterest Account To Come Back? 

It can take an hour, or it can take months. And it may never happen at all.

It’s a harsh reality of being a digital entrepreneur, but no platform owes you the right to use it. They can shutter the entire platform (remember Vine), kick you off, or just ignore you even when things aren’t your fault.

These platforms don’t care about you as an individual. It’s a somber reminder to invest in website traffic from Google as well as email marketing to keep in touch with your audience in other ways.

How Do I Protect Myself From Being Suspended From Pinterest?

Here are some tips to reduce your odds of having your Pinterest account suspended for no reason:

• The golden rule (treat others the way you want to be treated online). Does it feel good to recieve random, unsoliticed pins from people? No. Is following-unfollowing cool? No. If it would annoy you to be treated a certain way, don’t have that behavior coming from your Pinterest account
• Don’t commit spam, or anything even remotely related. Ask yourself when you’re walking the line with publishing best practices: does this feel spammy? Even if something isn’t *techincally* wrong, don’t walk that line.
• Stay up to date on best pracitces. Join email newsletter of Pinterest marketers, read blogs, listen to podcasts, join Facebook groups – stay up to date in any way that you can
• Hire informed help. If it’s too time consuming to shift through all of the outdated advice online, hire a Pinterest coach or outsource your Pinterest account altogether to a Pinterest manager (*raises hand*)

Final Thoughts

Are you armed and ready with the information that you need to go fight for your account to come back? If you truly didn’t commit any spam, then fight tooth and nail. Sadly, creators having their Pinterest accounts suspended for no reason probably won’t go away and this will always be a risk of using the platform.

Be the best creator you can be and build your traffic from other sources; as long as we want to keep using Pinterest, that’s all we can do!

Let’s hope it’s enough. If you have any experience about your Pinterest account being suspended for no reason, please share in the comments; I’d love to hear how your account came back, or what you’re currently trying.