Manage, on any row of the Members screen. Their name and address at the top, what has happened to them down the left, and what you may change down the right.
Activity
Everything this site knows about that reader, newest first: when they signed up, when they joined the newsletter, and every message you have sent them — sent, delivered, opened, clicked, bounced.
It is the answer to the only email question a small publication ever really gets asked: I never got my sign-in link. Look it up. Either it was delivered and the reader is looking in the wrong inbox, or it bounced and the address is wrong, or it was never sent and something is misconfigured — three different conversations, and the screen tells you which one you are having.
What you can change
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| First name, Last name | Cosmetic. What the newsletter greets them as. |
| Their credential. Changing it here takes effect immediately — there is no confirmation step for a staff edit. Get it wrong and the reader can no longer sign in, so change it only when you know the new address is right. | |
| Tier | Free, or any paid tier. Setting a paid tier comps them. |
| Subscribed to the newsletter | The same flag the reader sets on their Account page. |
Save member writes all four.
Comping
Moving a reader onto a paid tier from this screen grants access by hand. No Stripe customer, no charge, no subscription — and nothing a sync will ever undo. It is the right tool for staff, contributors, a swap with another publication, and the founder’s mother.
A comped reader reads as Supporter (comped) everywhere, counts as paying everywhere the paywall is concerned, and is included in a Only paid newsletter.
Dropping them back to Free removes the comp.
What only Stripe can do
Real subscriptions are started, changed and cancelled at Stripe — by the reader, in the billing portal, or by you, in the Stripe dashboard. This screen never pretends otherwise, and it will not let you cancel somebody’s billing from here, because a subscription that had been cancelled in WordPress and not at Stripe would keep charging their card.
Whatever you do at Stripe comes back within moments and the reader’s tier here follows it.
At a glance
Signed up, tier, and newsletter standing as a pill — Subscribed, Unsubscribed, Bounced, Complained.
Lifting a suppression
Bounced, complained and unsubscribed readers carry a Lift link beside the pill. It is the only thing that clears a suppression.
Saving the form never clears one, however the newsletter box is ticked. An address that does not exist does not start existing because somebody changed a reader’s plan and pressed Save, and re-mailing people who asked you to stop is how a publication’s domain gets blocklisted. Lifting is a separate, deliberate act by somebody who has read the reason and decided it no longer applies — a reader who wrote in to say they had fixed their mailbox, typically.
Deleting a reader
Delete is a bulk action on the Members screen. It removes the WordPress user and everything attached to them here.
It does not cancel anything at Stripe. If they are paying, cancel there first, or you will have deleted the account a live subscription belongs to.
Next: how readers sign in.