Hello– I had thought “subscribers” and “members” were synonymous in Ghost. However, I have a reader who says they have subscribed with their email and apparently is receiving my newsletter, but they do not show up on my Members list. Is this possible? How can I find out if anyone else is enrolled in this way? (I have only one tier, which is free).
Subscribers and members are not 100% identical, but not really in this way.
Members are anyone who has signed up on your website (or been imported by you). Free or paid, receiving the newsletter or not. If they completed the magic link process once, they’re a member, unless you have manually deleted them.
Subscribers are members who are receiving a newsletter. If they unsubscribe from your newsletter(s), they will still be members of the site.
With that said, there’s not a mechanism for someone to be receiving emails from your Ghost site and not be on the members list. However, if I had a nickel for every time someone forgot what email they’d signed up with (or complained about getting duplicate emails when they’d signed up with two different versions of their address!), I’d have a lot of nickels.
They could also be on a (non-Ghost) mailing or distribution list, and someone has gotten the whole list signed up as a Ghost member… or similar … so although this person isn’t signed up as a member, some email address that eventually causes email to land in their inbox has.
So… maybe you can’t find them because you’re searching for the wrong name/email?
The quickest way to get it sorted out is to ask them to forward a newsletter email to you. It’s extra obvious if you have the “subscription information” option turned on in newsletter settings, but even if you don’t, you should be able to read the “to” address and identify what’s going on.
Thanks Cathy. Still looking into this, but it’s helpful to confirm that I don’t have some other secret list of subscribers that I don’t see!