This guide explains how to send a private message or email to all users on your Discourse site, including using an external email service or creating an Announcements category.
Required user level: Administrator
While Discourse is not designed as an email sending service, there are methods to contact all your site’s users when necessary. This guide will explore two approaches: using an external email service and creating an Announcements category within Discourse.
Wait for the export to complete. You’ll receive a private message with a download link when the CSV file is ready. The download link will be valid for 48 hours.
Download and open the CSV file in a spreadsheet program.
Extract the email addresses from the email column.
Upload these email addresses to your chosen email sending service.
Compose and send your message using the external service.
Creating an Announcements category
As an alternative to external email services, you can create a protected Announcements category within Discourse:
Create a new category called “Announcements” (or a name of your choice).
Configure the category permissions:
Restrict topic creation to a select group (e.g., site staff)
This prevents spam and ensures only authorized users can post announcements
Create new topics in this category to send notifications:
Active users will receive onsite notifications
Inactive users will receive emails (based on their notification settings)
Note that only new topics will trigger notifications or emails. Replies in the category won’t generate notifications unless users are specifically watching the topic.
FAQs
Q: Can I track how many emails have been read or who has read them?
A: Discourse doesn’t provide built-in tracking for email opens. For self-hosted Discourse sites, it might be possible to track email opening through your email sending service, but this functionality is not native to Discourse.
Q: Will users receive notifications for every post in the Announcements category?
A: No, users will only receive notifications for new topics in the category. Replies to existing topics won’t generate notifications unless the user is specifically watching that topic.
Discourse doesn’t provide any way of tracking whether or not emails have been opened. If your Discourse site is self hosted, it might be technically possible to track email opening through the email sending service that you use to deliver the emails.
One question as I can’t think of the exact settings right now.
Is there a way to disable email notification by default on watched category alerts?
i.e. admin just wants native alerts, and no trigger for mass email alerts.
Right now if you set a category as a default watch for example for an entire user base, they will or may all get sent an email notifications alert, sometimes you don’t need or want that mass email trigger, only in-house on-platform alerts.
In the email tab of the user preferences, there is an option:
Email me when I am quoted, replied to, my @username is mentioned, or when there is new activity in my watched categories, tags or topics.
Users can set that to “never,” “only when away,” or “always.” You can configure the default for that preference with the default_email_level site setting. When you change that, you can choose to also change it for existing users. But it is not only about watched categories; it is also about @mentions and replies to their posts.
Thanks and yea had a feeling, that was the case and reason I couldn’t think of the exact setting.
Perhaps it’s time to prune deeply inactive users or is there a way to at least change the deeply inactive users defaults, maybe put them in a group “graveyard” and then set their default to no emails etc.
Ok from pondering this issue and looking for existing solution, and before going the dedicated topic route, this seems to be the right spot to ponder:
Is there an argument for a mass-email admin queue feature?
I think there is.
In my use case, sending out mass alert per the guide, also triggers (unwanted) mass emails, in this scenario if there was a mass-email queue, that trigger would need an admin approval.
So coudl not happen until reviewed by human eyes.
Being a blanket approval or granular approval where you might add/substract specific group.
This would actually solve the problem and add a beneficial feature.
A feature like this I imagine also safeguards against unintended expenses - since I guess most use pay-for 3rd party email services, accidentally firing out x100K Emails can become rather costly very quickly through misconfiguration, due to mistakes or ignorance over Y time.
This guide explains how to send a private message or email to all users on your Discourse site, including using an external email service or creating an Announcements category.
Required user level: Administrator
Note that only new topics will trigger notifications or emails. Replies in the category won’t generate notifications unless users are specifically watching the topic.
and then set their default to no emails etc.