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Subscribers & broadcasts

A subscriber is someone who gets a space's broadcast emails without being a member. No DFOS account, no login — just an email address on a list. Subscribing never grants access to anything inside the space; it only means the space can email you.

Subscribing​

A space can offer subscriptions, and it's on by default. It shows up once the space has a public profile, and an admin can turn it off. When it's on, the space's public page offers a subscribe form — drop in your email, get a welcome email, and you're on the list. That's the whole deal: you'll receive the space's broadcasts, and nothing more.

For spaces — the audience​

Admins have an audience view for the space. It shows subscriber stats, the full subscriber list, and any email lists the space keeps, all with export.

  • Email lists can be imported from a CSV file or pasted in directly. Every list feeds the space's subscribers — importing a list means subscribing the people on it, so only import addresses you're allowed to email.
  • Limits keep imports sane: up to 25,000 rows per import (50MB file), and up to 100,000 entries in a single list.
  • An import may be held briefly for a quick review before it goes live. When that happens, the app tells you.

Broadcasting​

When publishing a post, an admin can send it out as an email broadcast. It reaches the space's members and — if the sender chooses to include them — its subscribers, with each address getting it once.

  • A broadcast only goes to people who can actually read the post. The subscriber option is offered only when the post is readable space-wide, so a broadcast never emails someone content they couldn't otherwise see.
  • Broadcasts come from the space's own DFOS sending address, so replies and reputation stay with the space.
  • Two limits keep it from becoming a firehose: a space can send at most one broadcast every six hours, and there's a high rolling weekly cap on the total number of recipients.

Deliverability and verification​

Sending email to addresses that bounce hurts every space's ability to reach inboxes, so DFOS quietly checks addresses before broadcasting to them.

  • New addresses get verified. When a list is imported or someone subscribes, the addresses are checked with an email verification service in the background. This usually finishes within the hour. Addresses that turn out to be dead are excluded from broadcasts automatically — the audience view shows the breakdown.
  • Members are always deliverable. Anyone who signs in proves their address works, so members never need verification.
  • Addresses that bounce or complain stop receiving. A hard bounce, repeated soft bounces, or a spam complaint takes an address out of future sends automatically. Unsubscribes are always honored immediately.

Before a broadcast goes out, the publish flow shows a deliverability bar over the exact audience the send would reach — verified, risky, unverified, and undeliverable — so you can see the quality of your list before firing.

Two holds protect large sends:

  • Verification hold. If a large share of the audience hasn't finished verification yet — say, right after importing a big list — sending is paused until verification catches up. This is usually a matter of minutes; the publish flow tells you when it applies.
  • Canary hold. Very large broadcasts send to a small first tranche and check the real delivery results before releasing the rest. If bounces or complaints spike, the broadcast pauses instead of burning the full list.

None of this requires anything from you — import responsibly, and the system handles the rest.

Unsubscribing​

Every broadcast carries an unsubscribe link that works without logging in. Use it to drop just that one space, or all broadcast email at once. Your mail app's built-in one-click unsubscribe works too.

Receipts and money confirmations are separate — those aren't broadcasts and always arrive, so you always have a record of a charge or a refund. See How money works.