Docs · Earn & grow

Email digest

Your subscribers are the one audience no search engine or social network can take away. The email digest sends them your new articles automatically, so they keep coming back.

1. Set up email

Open Settings → Email.

How email is sent: Your hosting's mail works with no setup, but often lands in spam. For the inbox, choose An SMTP server:
Your host's mailbox: create an address like news@yourdomain.com in your hosting panel (in cPanel: Email Accounts), then copy its SMTP server, port, username and password (in cPanel: Connect Devices).
A free email service such as Brevo (300 emails a day free): sign up, add your domain, and use the SMTP details it gives you.
From address: an address on your own domain, not Gmail or Outlook. Emails "from" a Gmail address sent by your website are often treated as fake.
Emails per hour: digests are sent in batches below this. Most hosts allow 100 to 500 an hour.
Mailing address: shown at the bottom of every digest. US law (CAN-SPAM) requires a postal address in marketing emails; a PO box is fine.

Then open Promote and click Send a test to me. If it doesn't arrive within a few minutes, check your spam folder.

2. Turn on the digest

In Promote, switch on Send subscribers your new articles automatically and choose how often (every week or every two weeks), the day and the time.

Each digest lists the articles published since the last one, newest first, each with its image, summary and a Read more link. If nothing new was published, nothing is sent. Optionally, the AI writes a two-sentence intro (a fraction of a cent).

Preview shows the next digest as it would look now.
Send now sends it straight away instead of waiting for the scheduled time.
Digests sent shows each one, how many readers it reached and any failures.

Links in the digest are tagged, so visits from email show on the Growth page.

Subscribers

People sign up with the box after your articles and in the sidebar (switch it on in Monetization).

Confirmed sign-ups: while the digest is on, new subscribers get a "confirm your email" message first and only get digests once they click it. This keeps fake addresses off your list, and it's what privacy laws in the UK and EU expect. People who signed up before the digest existed count as confirmed.
Unsubscribe: every digest has an unsubscribe link, and email apps like Gmail show their own one-click Unsubscribe button. Unsubscribed readers are never emailed again unless they sign up again.

Getting into the inbox

Send through SMTP with an address on your own domain.
Ask your host (or email service) to set up SPF and DKIM for your domain. Most do it automatically; it proves the emails really come from you.
Keep Emails per hour within your host's limit.
Don't import lists of people who didn't sign up. It's against the law in many countries, and spam complaints hurt delivery for everyone on your server.

Sending needs cron

Digests go out in the background. With cron set up, they're sent at the scheduled time even when nobody is logged in. Without cron, they go the next time you open the admin.