The Substack Email Settings Edition

On settings, growth hacking, and setting the world to rights

Felix Salmon is a longstanding WITI contributor with an important PSA for Substack users.

Felix here. A couple of weeks ago, with a tinge of reluctance, I ran down my list of Substack subscriptions and systematically unsubscribed from all the ones I was paying for. It wasn’t because I didn’t like the writing, and it wasn’t because I couldn’t afford them. Instead, in the “why are you unsubscribing” box, I wrote the same thing each time: “No longer receiving Substack emails.”

I first noticed this problem with my favorite Substack newsletter, Why Is This Interesting. I’m a member of its Slack group, and the emails would show up there — but not in my inbox. I tried resubscribing, all manner of stuff, but nothing worked. Then I noticed I would get messages from other newsletters too, telling me that I was about to get billed for another month — but no actual emails from them. Eventually I just gave up and unsubscribed.

But then, a couple of days ago, spelunking in the depths of the Substack settings, I found this:

Apparently somehow I had managed to turn on “smart notifications” when for some godforsaken reason I downloaded the Substack app. And “smart,” in this context, somehow means “we’ll send you app notifications via email saying who has posted but we won’t send you any actual Substack emails”.

I then tried switching to “In email and app” but that didn’t seem to work either. After I switched to “Only in email,” however, I started receiving emails again.

This is a classic example of a case where the interests of Substack creators are at odds with the interests of Substack itself. The newsletter writers obviously want their emails to go out to all their subscribers — but Substack wants to push people to the app, where they are “followers” rather than subscribers. The result, in my case, was a wave of cancellations.

Anyway, if you’re wondering where all your Substack emails have gone, take a look in “settings” in Substack. The answer might be there.