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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, plus a chart of members and subscribers over time (see Your space's numbers).

  • 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 100,000 rows per import (50MB file), which is also the cap on a single list.
  • An import may be held for review before it goes live, and can be declined — the app tells you either way.

Managing subscribers​

  • Search and filter. Search subscribers by email, sort by when they were added, and switch between the people currently subscribed and the people who unsubscribed.
  • The date is when they were added. For someone who used the subscribe form, that's the day they subscribed. For someone who arrived in an imported list, it's the day the import landed — an import file doesn't carry the date each person originally subscribed, so that date isn't something the space knows.
  • Open a subscriber to see where they came from, which lists they're on, whether their address is still delivering, and every email this space has sent them.
  • Unsubscribing someone. You can unsubscribe an email-only subscriber if they ask you to. After that, only they can subscribe again — you can undo your own unsubscribe, but you can't reverse one they made themselves. Members aren't in your hands at all: they manage their own email settings.
  • Removing an address from a list takes it off that list and nothing more. If the person is subscribed, they stay subscribed.
  • Exporting can include the people who unsubscribed, with the date they left, so you can carry consent state over to another tool.

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.
  • Broadcasts are paced. A space can send at most one broadcast every six hours, so a list never gets a firehose.

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 automatically, shortly after they're added. Addresses that turn out to be dead are then excluded from broadcasts — 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. They come out of future sends automatically, and 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.

If a lot of your list is still unverified — right after a big import, say — a send may pause briefly until it catches up. On a very large broadcast DFOS may also pause partway through if delivery quality drops, rather than 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.