Subscriptions

This page covers the many ways you can use Jetpack’s Subscriptions module to let visitors to your site sign up to receive notifications of your latest posts and comments.

How does it work?

Many visitors visit your site once and never come back. However, you can convert more of these visitors into regular readers by making it easy to subscribe to your content. Jetpack takes care of letting them know whenever you publish a new post.

Subscriptions require no special magic to activate. Once you activate Jetpack on your site, Subscriptions will be activated by default (if not, switch on “Allow users to subscribe to your posts and comments and receive notifications via email” at Jetpack > Settings > Discussion in your site’s Dashboard). You’ll just need to set up a few features to take full advantage of the service.

Once Subscriptions are visible on your site, visitors can choose to subscribe to new posts, and/or to subscribe to new comments on a post they’ve commented on so they can stay involved in the conversation.

Note: We also include your followers on social media networks in your total subscriber count if you’re connected with Publicize.

Where will Subscriptions appear on my site?

Signup options for Subscriptions can appear in three places:

1. You’ll see two new checkboxes at the bottom of the comment form of every post and page. It’ll look something like this, depending on the theme you’re using and whether or not you’re using Jetpack Comments:

2. You can also add the Jetpack Subscriptions widget to your sidebar, which we strongly recommend. Go to your Dashboard, and head over to Appearance → Widgets. You’ll see a widget called Blog Subscriptions (Jetpack). Click and drag it to the part of your sidebar where you’d like it to appear.

3. You can also include the Subscriptions form anywhere on your site. To do so, add the following shortcode to any page or post:

[jetpack_subscription_form]

You can customize this shortcode by using the following modifiers:

• title – You can change the default “Subscribe to Blog via Email” to your own custom text by using title. Example: [jetpack_subscription_form title="My Custom Title"]
• subscribe_text – This will change the default “Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.” text. Example: [jetpack_subscription_form subscribe_text="My custom subscribe text!"]
• subscribe_button – This will change the default “Subscribe” button text. Example: [jetpack_subscription_form subscribe_button="Sign Me Up"]
• show_subscribers_total You can choose to show your total number of subscribers alongside your form. You can use 0 to hide them (the default) or 1 to show them. Example: [jetpack_subscription_form show_subscribers_total="1"]

Using the examples above, your shortcode of [jetpack_subscription_form title="My Custom Title" subscribe_text="My custom subscribe text!" subscribe_button="Sign Me Up" show_subscribers_total="1"] will look like this:

What will my visitors see when subscribing?

Visitors will first subscribe by typing in their email address. Afterwards, they’ll receive a confirmation email that looks like something like this:

Once they click the “Confirm Follow” button, they’ll receive a notification of every future post by email. Each email will have a link at the bottom to unsubscribe, so they won’t need to ask you to opt out. Also, if they ignore the confirmation email, they won’t receive anything from your site.

If you wish, you can customize the contents of this confirmation email by going to Settings → Reading in your dashboard.

Can I customize the content of the subscription emails?

• If you go to Settings → Reading in your dashboard, you can change your Feed Settings to “Summary”. Once you save your changes, all subscription emails will only include an excerpt of your post, with a link to continue reading on the site.
• If your Feed settings are set to “Full Text,” you can split the content of each one of your blog posts into two parts thanks to the More tag. Everything that is above the More tag will appear on your home page and in the subscription emails, followed by a link inviting users to click to continue reading. Everything that is below that tag will only appear on the post’s page.

Why are my shortcodes not rendering correctly?

Jetpack Subscriptions supports a subset of the most popular shortcodes used in subscription emails.

If you’re using a shortcode that WordPress.com and Jetpack Subscriptions does not support, then the shortcode will display in plain text.

If you do not like how shortcodes are handled in subscription emails, then you can follow the instructions to customize the content that is sent out.

Can I disable Subscriptions entirely?

If you don’t want to use Subscriptions, you can follow the instructions here to turn them off.

Can I see who my subscribers are?

Sure! Here’s how to find them:

1. Go to your Dashboard.
2. Click on Jetpack → Settings → Discussion.
3. Scroll down to the “Subscriptions” section.
4. Click on the link to “View your email followers.”

How can I transfer my followers from WordPress.com to Jetpack?

If you’ve moved from WordPress.com to your very own Jetpack-powered site and want to transfer your WordPress.com followers and email subscribers, please use our transfer tool.

Tips on using filters to customize subscription delivery

Three filters have been made available since version 3.7 that allows you to customize which posts get emailed to your subscribers. To do so, you would need to add the code to a functionality plugin or directly to your theme’s functions.php file.

jetpack_allow_per_post_subscriptions: Option to toggle email delivery on a per-post basis.

• Filter: jetpack_allow_per_post_subscriptions
• Will add a checkbox option to every new post of whether or not to email the post to subscribers.
• Example usage:

add_filter( 'jetpack_allow_per_post_subscriptions', '__return_true' );

jetpack_subscriptions_exclude_these_categories: Exclude certain categories from ever emailing to subscribers.

• Filter: jetpack_subscriptions_exclude_these_categories
• Will never send subscriptions emails to whatever categories are in that array
• Example usage:

add_filter( 'jetpack_subscriptions_exclude_these_categories', 'exclude_these' );
function exclude_these( $categories ) {
	$categories = array( 'category-slug', 'category-slug-2');
	return $categories;
}

jetpack_subscriptions_exclude_all_categories_except: Exclude all posts from emailing to subscribers, except ones in these categories.

• Filter: jetpack_subscriptions_exclude_all_categories_except
• Will never send subscription email for posts, UNLESS the post in in one of these categories.
• Example usage:

add_filter( 'jetpack_subscriptions_exclude_all_categories_except', 'exclude_all_except' );
function exclude_all_except( $categories ) {
	$categories = array( 'category-slug', 'category-slug-2');
	return $categories;
}

A note about these filters:

• These filters are not meant to be used together. Only one should be used at a time. They will override each other and it will be awkward.
• If either of the category filters are set, then the per-post checkbox will not display no matter what.

One final important note

Jetpack Subscriptions will only send out notifications for new posts. Publishing other post types (like pages or a custom post type) or making updates to an already published post will not send a notification e-mail.

Privacy Information

This feature is activated by default. It can be deactivated any time by toggling the Allow users to subscribe to your posts and comments and receive notifications via email setting in the Subscriptions section from Jetpack — Settings — Discussion in your dashboard.

Data Used
Site Owners / Users To set up and process subscriptions, we use the subscriber’s email address, as well as the ID of the post or comment (depending on the specific subscription being processed).In the event of a new subscription being initiated, we also collect some basic server data, including all of the subscribing user’s HTTP request headers, the IP address from which the subscribing user is viewing the page, and the URI which was given in order to access the page (REQUEST_URI and DOCUMENT_URI). This server data used for the exclusive purpose of monitoring and preventing abuse and spam. Additionally, for toggle activity tracking (detailed below): IP address, WordPress.com user ID, WordPress.com username, WordPress.com-connected site ID and URL, Jetpack version, user agent, visiting URL, referring URL, timestamp of event, browser language, country code.	Site Visitors To set up and process subscriptions, we use the subscriber’s email address, as well as the ID of the post or comment (depending on the specific subscription being processed).In the event of a new subscription being initiated, we also collect some basic server data, including all of the subscribing user’s HTTP request headers, the IP address from which the subscribing user is viewing the page, and the URI which was given in order to access the page (REQUEST_URI and DOCUMENT_URI). This server data used for the exclusive purpose of monitoring and preventing abuse and spam.
Activity Tracked
Site Owners / Users Functionality cookies are set for a duration of 347 days to remember a visitor’s blog and post subscription choices if, in fact, they have an active subscription.Additionally, we track when, and by which user, the feature is activated and deactivated. We also track when, and which, configuration settings are modified.	Site Visitors Functionality cookies are set for a duration of 347 days to remember a visitor’s blog and post subscription choices if, in fact, they have an active subscription.
Data Synced (Read More)
Site Owners / Users We sync options that identify whether or not the feature is activated and how its available settings are configured.	Site Visitors None.