When you publish a story on Exposure, you can automatically notify your email subscribers. Visitors to your site can subscribe to receive updates, and you control exactly who gets notified for each story you publish.

Pro Plus and Business plan users can organize subscribers into multiple mailing lists, giving you the power to segment your audience and send targeted notifications.

Note: Trial users can collect subscribers but cannot create mailing lists. Upgrade to a paid plan to unlock the full email subscriber features.

Visitors can subscribe to your stories in several ways:

When someone subscribes, they're added to your subscriber list and will receive an email notification each time you publish a new story (unless you choose not to notify them).

When you click Publish on a story, you'll see a Pre-Publish Check that shows:

Emails are sent 15 minutes after publishing, giving you a brief window to unpublish if you spot any last-minute issues.

Business plan users can send browser push notifications to subscribers when publishing a new story. Push notifications appear directly in the subscriber's browser or device notification center—even when they're not on your site.

Push notifications are enabled by default for Business plan users. To manage this setting:

When publishing, you can choose whether to send push notifications for each individual story:

Push notifications respect the same rules as email—they won't be sent for password-protected stories or when republishing.

You can view your push subscriber count in:

The Subscribe Nudge is a gentle prompt that appears when visitors scroll through your stories, encouraging them to subscribe. It's designed to capture engaged readers who might otherwise leave without subscribing. This feature is available on all paid plans (Pro, Pro Plus, and Business).

The nudge is designed to be respectful—it only appears once per session and can be easily dismissed. It won't interrupt readers who are already subscribers.

Mailing lists let you organize your subscribers into different groups. This is perfect if you create different types of content for different audiences.

Pro tip: If you're on the Pro plan and want to create custom lists, you'll see an option to upgrade to Pro Plus.

Every account has a Primary list that cannot be deleted. This is your main subscriber list and serves as the default for new subscribers.

When visitors see the "All Stories" option on your subscribe form, they're subscribing to the Primary list—meaning they'll be notified about any story you choose to send to Primary.

When you click Publish on a story, you'll see the Pre-Publish Check modal. What you see depends on your plan:

You'll see:

You'll see:

Default behavior:

Go to Subscribers in your dashboard. You'll see tabs for each of your lists:

Use the search bar to quickly find subscribers by email address. Results appear instantly as you type.

The subscriber will be moved immediately.

Click Remove next to any subscriber to remove them from that list. This is a soft removal—if they subscribe again in the future, they'll be re-added.

Business plan users can bulk import subscribers via CSV:

If someone previously unsubscribed themselves, they won't be re-added via import. This respects their preference. However, if you manually removed someone and try to re-import them, they will be restored.

All paying users (Pro, Pro Plus, and Business) can export their subscribers to a CSV file.

The Primary list is never shown in the public dropdown—it's represented by the "All Stories" option.

Subscriber notifications are not sent when:

By default, when subscribers reply to your story notification emails, their messages go to your public email or our support address. With Custom Reply-To Email, you can direct those replies to any email address you choose.

When you publish a story and subscribers receive the notification email:

The system uses this priority order for the Reply-To address:

Custom Reply-To Email is available on all paid plans (Pro, Pro Plus, and Business).

When a subscriber clicks "Unsubscribe" in an email:

This means if someone unsubscribes from your "Photography Tips" list, they'll still receive emails from your "Behind the Scenes" list (if they're on both).

After publishing a story with email notifications, you can track how your emails performed. Email stats help you understand subscriber engagement and optimize your content.

The Story Stats Panel shows:

Open Rate tells you how compelling your subject line and story title are. A healthy open rate is typically 20-40%.

Click Rate shows how effective your email preview is at driving readers to your story. This measures how many subscribers clicked the link in the email to view the full story.

Email stats are available for stories published after January 9, 2026. Stories published before this date won't show email performance data.

Email opens are tracked using a standard tracking pixel. We don't collect personal browsing data—only whether the email was opened and if the subscriber clicked through to your story.

If you downgrade from Business to Pro Plus, or from Pro Plus to Pro:

Your data is never deleted when you downgrade—you just temporarily lose access to features.

Q: Can subscribers be on multiple lists? A: No, each subscriber belongs to one list at a time. You can move them between lists as needed.

Q: What happens if I downgrade my plan? A: Your lists and subscribers remain intact. However, you won't be able to send to lists beyond your plan's limit until you upgrade again.

Q: Can I re-send notifications for a published story? A: No, notifications are only sent once when a story is first published. This prevents accidental duplicate emails.

Q: How do I see email open rates? A: Open and click statistics are available in Story Stats for each published story.

Q: What if someone unsubscribes and wants to re-subscribe? A: They can subscribe again using your subscribe form. Their previous unsubscribe preference is respected—we won't re-add them via CSV import.

Q: Why can't I import subscribers? A: CSV import is a Business plan feature. Upgrade to Business to import subscribers in bulk.

Q: How quickly are emails sent after publishing? A: Emails are queued 15 minutes after you publish, giving you time to catch any last-minute issues.

Q: Can I customize the notification email? A: The email includes your story's cover image, title, and a preview. The design is optimized for all email clients and cannot be customized.

Q: Is there a limit to how many subscribers I can have? A: There's no limit to organic subscribers. Business plan users have a limit of 10,000 CSV-imported subscribers.

Q: How do push notifications differ from email notifications? A: Push notifications are instant browser notifications that appear immediately when you publish. Email notifications are sent 15 minutes after publishing. Both can be enabled independently for Business plan users.

Q: Will the subscribe nudge annoy my visitors? A: The nudge is designed to be respectful—it only appears once per browsing session and can be easily dismissed. It targets engaged readers who have scrolled past 50% of your content. Available on all paid plans.

Q: Can I set a custom Reply-To address for subscriber emails? A: Yes! Go to Settings → Subscribers and enter your preferred email in the Custom Reply-To Email field. When subscribers reply to your story notifications, their message will go to your custom address instead of your account email.

Q: What happens if I don't set a custom Reply-To email? A: If no custom address is set, we'll use your public email (if configured) or default to our support address.

If you have questions about subscribers or mailing lists, we're here to help: