Unlocking subscriber portability

Privacy by default is the way the internet should be. But it's beneficial to publish thoughts we're ready and comfortable sharing with the world. Listed was founded as the public-facing counterpart to the very private Standard Notes. With Listed, you share and publish select thoughts to the world wide web.

But there's a catch. You're locked in. Once you build an audience of email subscribers on Listed, you'll never be able to take them with you if you decide to move on and use a different tool. Savvy customers recognize this early and this prevents them from starting to use Listed in the first place. Why would I use a tool that permanently locks me in and doesn't allow me to carry over my progress in the future?

For this reason, a fundamental change is coming to Listed in the near future: authors will be able to see and export the emails of their subscribers. This will allow authors to try out Listed without the fear of lock-in. If they decide in the future, whether it's 1, 2, or 5 years in, that Listed isn't for them, they can easily take their domain and subscribers with them.

The first change is live now: when a new person subscribes to your blog, you'll see their email in your notification email.

However, for people who subscribed to your blog back when we told subscribers "the author won't be able to see your email," we'd like to give them a chance to opt out before the ability for authors to see all subscriber emails is live. What we plan to do is send an automated email to all your subscribers informing them of the policy change, and giving them a chance to unsubscribe before the change is made.

We hope this change encourages more people to begin using Listed comfortably and without fear of lock-in. It's rare that someone uses the same blog provider for their entire digital life, and we think it is the right of authors to be able to communicate offline with their hard-earned subscribers.

If you have any questions or concerns, please email us at listed@standardnotes.com.