Do you want your visitors to get email alerts about new comments and stay updated?
By subscribing to comments, your users can stay updated with blog posts that generate a lot of community discussions or heated debates.
In this article, we will show you how to allow your users to subscribe to comments in WordPress.
Why Let Users Subscribe to Comments?
Allowing people to comment on your WordPress blog is a great way to get feedback and learn about your user’s problems.
However, most of the time your users will visit your website, leave a comment, and never return. That is because they don’t remember that they added a comment on your site.
By allowing users to subscribe to comments, they’ll get email alerts whenever there’s a new comment on your blog post. This helps bring them back to your website and increase engagement.
Comment subscription is also useful when people want to subscribe to comment threads that generate a lot of discussions or heated debates.
Sadly, WordPress doesn’t offer a default feature or a setting to allow your visitors to subscribe to comments. However, a WordPress plugin can easily help you out.
That said, let’s look at how to allow users to subscribe to comments in a WordPress website.
Allow Users to Subscribe to Comments in WordPress
The easiest way to set up a subscription to comments is by using the Subscribe to Comments Reloaded plugin.
It’s a free WordPress plugin that allows your users to sign up for email notification of the comment thread. It gives you full control over managing your subscribers and disabling comment subscriptions for specific articles.
The first thing you need to do is install and activate the Subscribe to Comments Reloaded plugin. If you need help, please refer to our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, you need to visit StCR » Comment Form from your WordPress admin panel to configure the plugin settings.
You’ll now see a list of options. Make sure that the ‘Enable default checkbox’ option says ‘Yes’.
This will show a checkbox allowing users to subscribe to comments on your WordPress blog post.
Next, if you want to change the text of the comment subscription checkbox, then simply scroll down to the ‘Messages for your visitors’ section.
You can edit the text that your visitors will see for the checkbox, when they subscribe to comments in a blog post, after their subscription is confirmed, and more.
When you’re done, save your settings and then visit your website to see the comment subscription checkbox below the comment form.
Note that your users don’t need to leave a comment in order to subscribe. They can simply click on the Subscribe link to get notifications without leaving a comment.
The plugin offers additional settings for your comment subscription checkbox. However, these settings are optional and you can continue to use the default settings.
Additional Comment Subscription Options
The Subscribe to Comments Reloaded plugin offers more settings that you can use to customize your comment subscriptions.
There are options to safely remove the plugin without losing your subscribers. You can also change the date format and enable the double-check option to send an email to confirm the subscription.
Besides that, you can edit more settings under the ‘Options’ tab. For example, you can track users who subscribe without commenting, enable subscriptions only on blog posts or for only logged-in users, and more.
If you scroll down, the plugin also offers a few security options for your subscription form. You can set up a challenge question on the subscription form and also enable reCAPTCHA.
Managing Comment Subscriptions
Subscribe to Comments Reloaded plugin comes with tools for you and your users to manage subscriptions. As the site administrator, you can visit StCR » Manage subscriptions to manage your subscribers.
Here you can add new subscribers manually by entering the post ID, email, and choosing a status under the ‘Add New Subscription’ meta box. Plus, there’s also an option to search your subscriptions.
Next, the WordPress comment subscription plugin also allows your users to visit the subscription page on the front-end to manage their subscriptions. By default, the URL of the subscription page will look like this:
http://www.example.com/comment-subscriptions/
Simply replace example.com with your own domain name. This is the URL your users will receive in an email when they subscribe to a comment thread. From this page, they can manage their subscriptions and cancel them at any time.
You can change the content of the subscription page by visiting StCR » Management Page page. There are options to edit the management URL, page title, and the messages your visitors will see.
You can also change the contents of the email notifications by clicking on the ‘Notifications’ tab. This is particularly helpful if you are using WordPress in another language without changing the backend language.
If your users are unable to receive email notifications, then you need to check out our guide on how to fix WordPress not sending email issue.
We hope this article helped you allow your users to subscribe to comments in WordPress. You may also want to check out our guide on how to allow users to subscribe to categories in WordPress and the best WooCommerce plugins.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Niala says
Thanks for sharing this plugin. Very useful.
WPBeginner Support says
You’re welcome
Admin
Navin Rao says
My God…!! your blog is just a magic, I put any query regarding wordpress in google, your blog comes up…!
I know you have worked hard for years that to happen..
Excellent work…!!
Sourav Biswas says
Thanks for This Post
Joseph says
Long ago I was looking for a similar solution, very grateful to share.
Shanti says
Thanks for sharing this list.
Ramon says
Only testing the plugin
John says
awesome
Debra says
Hi,
I was so excited to try this plugin, however I am having trouble whereas the little box and the line “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting.” is not showing up. Do you have a suggestion or a link that might help?
Thank you in advance
Miguel says
thank so much
Reedyseth says
Hey EDITORIAL STAFF,
Thank you for taking the time to share this and to review the plugin.
I am release two wonderful features (one click unsubscribe and a WYSIWYG editor) on the next update so stay tune.
WPBeginner Support says
Thanks for writing this useful plugin and sharing it with the WordPress community.
Admin
Reedyseth says
Thank you for spreading the word.
Graham Cluley says
Thanks for this guide – I’m going to give it a try.
Santiago says
Could you suggest how to implement this functionality without plugins? i mean, manually?
Tosty says
Do you have a translation of the plugin in Dutch? And i tried to translate it .po .mo but i did not work when i uploaded it. I use not a standard theme. Where should ik put the .mo .po? Best Regards, Tosty
WPBeginner Support says
you need to upload the translated files in the plugin directory.
Admin
Ravi says
How can i get this option “Subscribe to WPBeginner Updates (Weekly Email)” with check box like yours.
Any plugin available or any related link you can paste here.
Editorial Staff says
This should answer that:
https://www.wpbeginner.com/blueprint/comments/
Admin
Ravi says
Thank you.
Marlita Hill says
Hi. I run a blog that has lots of authors. I want them to be able to get notified when someone comments on their post and replies to their comments. How can I do that?
Editorial Staff says
Try using this plugin:
http://wordpress.org/plugins/cbnet-multi-author-comment-notification/
Admin
My Own Advisor says
Anyway to delete the “Subscribe to comments feed” rss icon that appears above the “Notify me of followup comments via email” checkbox?
This appears on my site and I’ve seen it on many others.
Thanks so much!
Mark
Editorial Staff says
That’s part of your theme. You’d have to edit the theme file for that. Look in your comments.php file. Another thing you can do is use display: none in css to hide that link.
Admin
Willem says
There is also a Reloaded version of subscribe to comments, why not use that one?
Editorial Staff says
Because this one does the job just fine.
Admin
Theite Herron says
Really very useful tips. Thank you.
I’d like to test if the subscription for followup comments is working, using Twitter sign-in.
Editorial Staff says
Thanks. Did the reply work?
Admin
Theite Herron says
No, unfortunately it didn’t. I was hoping you solved the problem that Twitter doesn’t provide the user’s email address. Twitter doesn’t seem to understand that it’s technically necessary to have a valid email address to send the followup comments to.
What’s the use of signing in with Twitter in order to comment on a blog post if you can’t subscribe to followup comments via email? Well, you can subscribe, but you won’t ever get an email.
The fake-email which is generated (by the API?) would be fine if Twitter forwarded the email to the real email address. I.e. I’m not interested in the real email-address, I just want to offer subscribing to comments not only for people who signed in with Facebook or their name and email address but also if they signed in with Twitter.
Editorial Staff says
Ah that sucks. Will have to talk to twitter about it then.
arsieorgano says
actually, i am looking for manually coding it and adding it on my blog… do you have any?
coolcash4live says
Thank you fro sharing this plugins but it doesn’t have menu where you can use to edit it…how about this?
Stan says
Very nice feature indeed, but as Johan said, what is the best plugin for preventing spam comments?
Stan
Editorial Staff says
Here is the article you should refer to:
https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/vital-tips-and-tools-to-combat-comment-spam-in-wordpress/
Admin
Johan Roode says
But what can you do about all those spam comments? CAn you post some tips / advice on which plugins to use to minimise the spam comments?
Editorial Staff says
Will have an article coming up soon about that as per your request
Admin
Nadia says
Thanks for this nice tip.