How To Add Subscribe Button To Wordpress Blog

This page explains how visitors to your site can sign up to receive notifications of your latest posts and comments. If you're looking for Jetpack plan subscriptions, check out our pricing page.

For general features and FAQs, please see our information page.

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.

To enable Subscriptions, navigate to Jetpack → Settings → Discussion.

Subscriptions options in the Jetpack settings of WP Admin

Activate the Let visitors subscribe to new posts and comments via email option to turn on the Subscriptions feature.

Once Subscriptions are active 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.

To allow visitors to subscribe to receive notifications of all new posts when leaving a comment, activate the Enable the "subscribe to site" option on your comment form option.
To allow visitors to be notified of future comments on a post, activate the Enable the "subscribe to comments" option on your comment form option.

You can also choose to be notified any time someone follows your blog. You can find the setting for this in the core WordPress settings.

In the WP Admin menu (not Jetpack), navigate to Settings → Discussion .
Scroll to the Email me whenever section.
SelectSomeone follows my blog.

Adding a Subscription Form Widget

The easiest and most commonly used method to add a Jetpack subscription form is with the widget.

In WP Admin, head over to Appearance → Widgets.
Find the widget called Blog Subscriptions (Jetpack).
Click and drag it to the part of your sidebar where you'd like it to appear.

In Widget title, enter the title for your subscriptions form.
You can choose to use the default form text or customize what you'd like the form to say in Optional text to display to your readers. You can also remove that entirely so that the form is just the title and the button.
Enter the button text you'd like to us in Subscribe Button.
Click Save.

Go the site and find the widget area. You should see your customized subscriptions form there.

That's it! Jetpack takes care of all the rest. When someone signs up to follow your site, we send an email with a link to confirm their subscription. This helps to prevent spam followers. Once they've confirmed, we email them every time you publish a new post.

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

Following via Comments

If you've selected the options to Enable the "subscribe to comments" option on your comment form and/or Enable the "subscribe to site" option on your comment form, you'll see 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:

Site visitors can check the Notify me of follow-up comments via email. to get an email every time someone else comments on this post. They can also select the Notify me of new posts via email. option to follow the blog. After selecting this option, Jetpack will send them the same confirmation email that we send to those who sign up with any other method.

Adding a Form to Posts and Pages

You can also include the Subscriptions form anywhere on your site. To do so, you can either use the Subscription Form Block or 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:

FAQ

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:

Email that followers will receive to confirm their subscription

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.

What does a subscription email look like?

A subscription email will be sent to subscribers each time a new post is added. It will include your author name, author photo, and site logo (if configured). It will look roughly like this:

At the bottom of each email, there is a link back to the full post on your site and also a link for the reader to unsubscribe.

Can I customize the content of the subscription emails?

In order to only have a short excerpt show in the subscriber emails go to Settings → Reading in your dashboard, and locate the option for "For each article in a feed, show" and make sure that's set to Summary:
With the "Full text" option enabled, your followers will get the full content of your posts.

Note: The steps above will also adjust your site's RSS feed.

If you prefer, 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 does my username display in the subscription emails?

When you publish a new post, the subscription email includes a "by [author]" section below the post title. This uses the public display name settings from your site, which defaults to your username if you haven't entered your real name. To change this, go to Users → My Profile and enter a first and last name, then you can change the Display name publicly as setting, to display a variation of your name instead of your username.

Can I disable Subscriptions entirely?

Can I see who my subscribers are?

Sure! Here's how to find them:

Go to your Dashboard.
Click on Jetpack → Settings → Discussion.
Scroll down to the "Subscriptions" section.
Click on the link to "View your email followers."

Why is my subscriber count higher than expected?

If you've connected your site to any social networks using Jetpack's Publicize feature, we add your followers from those into your subscriber count. This is because, when you publish a new post, your social media followers will see an update about the new content, just like your email followers will.

Why can't I see all my email followers?

The Email Followers tab currently only shows email subscribers who do not have a WordPress.com account. Your followers should still be receiving your email updates if they are shown in the main Followers list:

http://wordpress.com/people/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.

Can I import subscribers from a CSV file into Jetpack?

Due to consent related policies involved, it's not possible to import a list of subscribers from a CSV file or any file to add them on Jetpack, as subscriptions are strictly opt-in only. However, there are two alternative ways to move them over to Jetpack Subscriptions:

Inviting those subscribers under My site → People, though it's only possible to invite ten people to prevent abusive uses of that feature, and it may take some time until it's possible to invite the next ten – those will then receive an email with a link to accept the invitation and become subscribers.
Creating a new page and adding the Jetpack Subscription Form block, then sending them the link, so they subscribe through Jetpack.

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.

Note: This filter only currently works if you have the Classic Editor plugin installed and active on your site.

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:

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

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:

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

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.

A note about post types

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.

Additional Troubleshooting

Are you experiencing any issues with Jetpack's subscription feature ? If so, here are a few key steps that can help you solve the problem.

Emails going to spam.

Some email providers sometimes mark the emails coming from `*wordpress.com` as spam for security reasons. This means that the email might have gone to the junk or spam folder.

Action to take: check the spam/junk folder to see if the emails have landed there. If that doesn't help, reach out to the email provider and ask them to whitelist emails coming from `*wordpress.com`.

Confirmation link has expired.

Once a user subscribes to a site/blog they receive a confirmation email with a link to click in order to verify their subscription. This link lasts only 24 hours for security reasons.

Action to take: try subscribing to the site again. If you still don't receive the confirmation email, check your spam/junk folder. If there's nothing in there, head to https://subscribe.wordpress.com/. Click on 'Request Details' and then click on the link in the email that you will receive. This will take you to a page where you can manage your subscriptions. Check in the Pending tab if there's anything you need to confirm, cancel or approve.

Check your plugins.

It's possible that there might be another plugin active in your site that's clashing with Jetpack's subscription feature.

Action to take: if that's so, try temporarily deactivating all your plugins, and then try sending another post to see if the subscriptions are sent. If it works, then reactivate each plugin one-by-one to find out which one is causing problems. Once you find it out, you can deactivate that if it's not very much useful for you. It's also worth reporting the plugin conflict to the plugin author(s) and to us too. There's a partial list of plugins that may conflict with Jetpack at this page.

Check your post content.

If your posts have no content, Jetpack will not send new post email notifications to your subscribers.

Action to take: make sure your post content is not empty. If page builders on your site use custom fields rather than the default WordPress post content field, Jetpack will not send emails also.

The subscription feature doesn't work at all and I can't figure out what's broken.

If your posts have no content, Jetpack will not send new post email notifications to your subscribers.

If you can't pinpoint the root of the issue that's preventing Subscriptions from working properly and showing as expected, chances are your Jetpack connection isn't working properly either.

There are steps outlined on this page that you can follow to check and debug your Jetpack connection.

In case the Jetpack debugger is still showing a connection error, you can directly contact our support.

I've lost all my followers!

If you suddenly see that all your followers are disappeared into thin air, don't lose your heart! All your data is stored in our WordPress.com servers, so it's unlikely that you've lost all your followers. Chances are you're running into an Identity Crisis issue.

We can recover your temporary lost followers for you: just contact us and let us know what happened to you and your followers. We'll be happy to fix that for you!

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.

Privacy Information

This feature is deactivated by default. It can be activated 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.

More information about the data usage on your site

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.