Manage your subscribers

Each time you publish a new post, your subscribers receive an update via email, in their Reader, or both, depending on their settings. This guide will explain how to manage your WordPress.com site’s subscribers.

To view your subscribers:

1. Visit your site’s dashboard.
2. Navigate to Jetpack → Newsletter.

3. Click the Subscribers tab.

The Newsletter page opens on the Overview tab. While you set up your newsletter, the Overview tab shows a checklist to help you add a subscribe form, get your first three subscribers, and send your first newsletter. Click Skip on any step you don’t need. After you get your first three subscribers and send your first newsletter, or skip those steps, the Overview tab shows your subscriber stats instead.

In the Subscribers tab, you will find a list of people subscribed to your site’s posts:

The subscriber list shows the following columns:

• Name: The subscriber’s name, or their email address if no name is available.
• Subscription type: If they are a free, complimentary, or paid subscriber.
• Email subscription: Whether the subscriber receives your new posts by email. See what each email subscription status means.
• Date subscribed: The date they subscribed to your site.
• Actions: Click the three-dot menu (⋮) next to a subscriber to view details, comp or remove a comped subscription, send a confirmation email to a bounced subscriber, or remove the subscriber from your site.

The Email subscription column shows whether each subscriber receives your new posts by email. Each subscriber has one of the following statuses:

• Subscribed: Receiving your newsletter via email.
• Not subscribed: Not subscribed to your newsletter via email, but subscribed to the site via the Reader.
• Not confirmed: Not a subscriber yet because they have not confirmed their email. They are not counted towards your total subscriber count.
• Bounced: Subscribed, but emails to their address can’t be delivered. Check that the address is correct, or ask the subscriber for a different one. If the address is correct, you can resume emails to them.
• Emails paused: Subscribed, but the subscriber has paused all email notifications from WordPress.com. Only the subscriber can turn emails back on, from their WordPress.com account settings.
• Not sending: Subscribed, but blocked from receiving emails for another reason.

Subscribers labeled Bounced, Emails paused, or Not sending still count toward your subscriber limit because they have a Reader subscription. Hover over a Bounced or Emails paused label to see why that subscriber isn’t receiving emails.

When you open a subscriber’s details, the Newsletter subscription details panel shows a Receives emails for row. The row lists the newsletter categories that subscriber receives emails for. The row appears when newsletter categories are turned on for your site and that subscriber’s Email subscription shows Subscribed. If either is not true, the row does not appear. The row reads “Not subscribed to any newsletter categories” if the subscriber has opted out of all of them.

You can filter, sort, and search your subscribers to customize the view. Use the options at the top of the Subscribers list to:

• Click “Add filter” to filter by subscription type or email subscription status. You’ll see the total number of subscribers with that label. Select the “Not sending (any reason)” option to see every subscriber who isn’t receiving emails, including those labeled Bounced or Emails paused.
• Click a column heading to sort your subscriber list by that column.
• Use the “Search subscribers” field to search by name, username, or email.

To resume emails to a subscriber labeled Bounced, send them a confirmation email from your subscriber list. When they click the link in the email, we start sending them your new posts by email again. Before you send one, check that their email address is correct.

To send a confirmation email:

1. Visit your site’s dashboard.
2. Navigate to Jetpack → Newsletter, then click the Subscribers tab.
3. Click the three-dot menu (⋮) next to a subscriber labeled Bounced.
4. Select the “Send confirmation email” option:

You can also send it with the “Send confirmation email” button in the subscriber’s details. A “Confirmation email sent.” message appears. The subscriber stays labeled Bounced until they click the link in the email.

You can send one confirmation email to each address every 30 days. Until then, the option doesn’t appear in the three-dot menu, and the button in the subscriber’s details is unavailable. The details show when the last confirmation email was sent.

You can add a Subscribe block in a prominent position on your site to encourage people to subscribe to your posts.

You can also manually add subscribers to your site if you know their email address. To add subscribers to your site, take these steps:

1. Visit your site’s dashboard.
2. Navigate to Jetpack → Newsletter, then click the Subscribers tab.
3. Click the “Add subscribers” button in the top right corner.
4. Type the email addresses of your new subscribers in the box provided, one per line.
   • You can also select “Upload CSV” to upload a large list of subscribers or select Substack to import subscribers from Substack. See Import Subscribers for more.
5. Click the “Add subscribers” button to finish.

If you import subscribers and you want them to pay for a newsletter or provide them with access to paid content, you can follow these steps:

1. Import a list of your subscribers by visiting Jetpack → Newsletter → Subscribers.
2. Click on the “Add subscribers” button in the top right corner.
3. Click the “Upload CSV” link to upload a list of your subscribers.
4. Send your subscribers a link to your new paid content and encourage them to purchase a new subscription.

Importing your paid subscribers from another platform only imports their email addresses. For security reasons, no payment information is imported with them. You can send them an email that includes a link to a paid newsletter or a page with paid content so they can securely enter their payment information. Learn more about managing paid subscribers.

You can access detailed statistics and insights about your subscribers.

Learn more about viewing your subscriber stats, including individual subscriber details and email open/click rates.

To delete a subscriber:

1. Visit your site’s dashboard.
2. Navigate to Jetpack → Newsletter, then click the Subscribers tab.
3. Click the three-dot menu (⋮) next to the subscriber you would like to remove.
4. Select “Remove subscriber” from the drop-down list.

5. A pop-up will appear. Click the Remove button to confirm that you no longer wish this person to receive new notifications from your site.

You can delete many subscribers at once by selecting them in your subscriber list and removing them together, up to 100 at a time. To remove subscribers in bulk:

1. Visit your site’s dashboard.
2. Navigate to Jetpack → Newsletter, then click the Subscribers tab.
3. Select the checkbox next to each subscriber you want to remove. To select every subscriber on the current page, select the checkbox in the list’s header row.
4. Click the “Remove subscriber” button at the bottom of the list.

5. In the pop-up, click the Remove button to confirm.

The removed subscribers are unsubscribed from your site, and any paid subscriptions they have are cancelled. Removing subscribers can’t be undone.

Bulk removal works on one page of the list at a time. To remove more subscribers in each round, click the settings icon in the top right of the subscriber list. In the Appearance pop-over, set the “Items per page” option to 100.

If you need to remove thousands of subscribers, contact support with your site address and the number of subscribers you want to remove.

You can download your subscribers as a CSV file that matches the Subscribers list on your screen. The file uses the filters, sort order, and search you have set on the list. For example, if you filter to Not confirmed, the file has only those people. If you haven’t set a filter or search, you get everyone in the list.

To download your subscriber list, follow these steps:

The CSV file has the following columns:

• Email: The subscriber’s email address.
• Name: The subscriber’s name.
• Subscription type: Free, Comp, or Paid.
• Plan: The name of the subscriber’s plan, if they have one.
• Email subscription: The subscriber’s email subscription status.
• Date subscribed (UTC): The date and time they subscribed, in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
• Categories: The newsletter categories the subscriber receives emails for. This column appears when your site uses newsletter categories.

People who haven’t confirmed their email yet are in the file too, with the status Not confirmed. Accented names display correctly when you open the file in Excel.

To download only people who receive your emails, filter the list to Subscribed first.

You can then use that file to import your subscribers to another platform like MailPoet.

Very large sites get a different file. This applies if your site has more than 100,000 Reader followers or email subscribers, or more than 150,000 of the two together. The file has the Email and Email subscription columns, plus Categories when your site uses newsletter categories, and it stops at 100,000 rows.

On these sites, a download with a filter or search set shows this message instead: “This site has too many subscribers to download a filtered list. Clear the filters and search to download everyone.” Clear the filters and search, then download the file again.

If your subscriber count isn’t matching what you expect, filter by Email Subscription to see how many subscribers are opted-in and eligible to receive email. If you’re comparing the number to the Subscribe block, it’s possible you have social followers included in the count.

If you have subscribers who claim they aren’t receiving your newsletter via email, filter your subscribers by email subscription to confirm they are opted-in and eligible to receive email. For a subscriber labeled Bounced, confirm their address is correct or ask for another one. If the address is correct, send them a confirmation email. For one labeled Emails paused, ask them to turn emails back on in their WordPress.com account settings.

If this doesn’t resolve your issue, please contact support.