Logic behind paid member emails going to all members

Today I wrote a post / sent an email that I intended to publish on the website for paid members and, I thought, emailing it to all members, thinking that only paid members would receive the entire post and the other members would get the headline and header image and a ‘this post is for paid members only’, which would be great because it would hopefully inspire some of them to become paid subscribers, as opposed to having to go to the website to see that there’s great stuff they could read if they were paid members.

instead the email went out to everyone, paid member or free member. Of course it’s locked on the website, but I already know how to do that. I’ve spent a lot of time in the documentation trying to figure this out and I don’t see anything that explains this logic?

I understand that I could just send these newsletters to my paid members but I was hoping for the use case I’ve outlined above. It also doesn’t make any sense that I’d set the post for paid members only and it would go to everyone. I’m sure I’m missing something. Can someone point me in the right direction w/r/t documentation on this? Thank you!

Something is odd here. Do you have the post acesss set to paid members (and did before you sent it by email)? If you have a public preview line, is it before the end of the post?

You’re pretty confident that free members really received the whole thing?

thanks for responding.

Yes. The post access was set to paid members, and was set before I hit ‘send’.

Yes. I have test email addresses set up, one as a free subscriber, one as a paid subscriber. Both of them got the entire post.

When I test in preview, and click on the envelope icon, it always showed the entire post even when I toggled to ‘free’, and so in the past I just sent it to paid members but this most recent missive was low-priority enough I threw caution to the wind to see what would happen.

I only set a public preview line after the post went out, realizing I hadn’t set one. But I didn’t think that the public preview line would impact the emails, I thought that was just for people who access the post through the web. Is that my error?

Thanks.

That’s very strange. I can confirm that free users sent a newsletter marked for paid member access with a preview card get just what’s above the preview and then the CTA card.
Ghost Pro, so current version.

HOWEVER, if I don’t set a public preview, then it does appear that free members get the whole post.

Hey @Kevin , is this the expected behavior?
TL: DR: If a post is set to paid members only but is emailed to free members, they get the full post content UNLESS a preview card is set (in which case the behavior is as-expected.

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