Basic Autoresponder

The Basic Autoresponder contains 68 pre-built email actions that send the right email at the right time: welcoming new subscribers, reminding members before renewals, recovering cancelled subscriptions with offers, thanking donors, and more. Go to Autoresponder → Basic to manage the pre-built actions. For custom multi-step flows, see the Advanced Autoresponder.

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The Big Off/On Button

The Basic Autoresponder has a master toggle labeled “The Big Off/On Button.” When it’s off, every Basic action is disabled regardless of individual toggles. The Advanced Autoresponder and the Failed Payment Flow each have their own independent master toggles.

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Pre-built actions

The Basic Autoresponder contains 68 pre-built email actions organized across 6 tabs. Each action is pre-configured with a default email template, timing, and (where appropriate) a discount offer. You can change the wording, styling, timing, offer, or turn individual actions on or off. We recommend changing the email template to make the messages match your voice.

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How email timing works

Most autoresponder emails are sent with a 2-minute delay after the triggering event. This handles the case where a member toggles a setting twice in quick succession. Outpost waits until the change sticks before sending. Gift subscription and donation emails are the exceptions and send immediately.

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Duplicate prevention

Outpost includes two layers of duplicate prevention to avoid sending the same email more than once:

• 60-minute deduplication: The same action won’t send the same template to the same member twice within 60 minutes. Important to know when testing: if you send a test and then trigger the action again within an hour, the second email will be silently skipped.
• One-month deduplication for scheduled actions: Actions that run on a schedule (such as card expiration reminders and cart-reminder nudge emails) check whether the same template was already sent to the member within the past calendar month. This prevents subscribers from receiving the same recurring reminder repeatedly.

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How Action Items work

Each Action Item has these controls: Some Action Items display performance stats below them: Sent, Opened %, Clicked %, Converted %, and Revenue. Ten actions are sent once a day rather than at the moment something happens: the two renewal reminders, the three reminders to a member who has cancelled, and the five complimentary expiry emails. Their timing is set in whole days, one day at the shortest, so those rows don’t offer the Hours option.

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Use your own template in a Basic action

Each Basic action’s template dropdown only lists templates built for that action. A template you create from Email Settings → Templates → New Email Template goes into your general template library, but it will not appear in a Basic action’s dropdown. To use your own wording in a Basic action, start from this page instead of the Templates page. Find the action, open its current template with the pencil icon, change the name and content, and save. The first time you do this for an action, Outpost keeps the built-in default and saves your edit as a new template attached to that action. After that, the action uses your own template, and editing it again from this page updates that same template in place.

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About Auto-Spaced timing

Some flows run over a window whose length depends on the member, not a fixed schedule. Free trials are the clearest case: you might run a 7-day trial on one offer, a 10-day trial on another, and a 14-day trial on a third, all sharing the same flow. Setting an Action Item to Auto-Spaced tells Outpost to compute the send time from this member’s window rather than a fixed delay. With three trial reminders, that means:

• On a 7-day trial → reminders land roughly every 2 days
• On a 10-day trial → reminders land roughly every 3 days
• On a 14-day trial → reminders land roughly every 4–5 days

You set the flow up once, and the timing adapts to whichever trial the member is on. Auto-Spaced is currently used for the trial reminder rows; other Action Items use Immediate or a fixed delay like 3 Days or 1 Week.

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Selecting offers

The Offer cell appears on actions whose email includes an offer link. None of the four gift reminders show it, for two different reasons. The three reminders to the gift giver include a renewal link rather than an offer link, so there is no offer to set. The reminder to the gift recipient does include an offer link, but the cell is held back so the price comes from the Gift Subscriptions settings page instead. See the Gift Subscriptions tab below. Click the Offer cell to open the Select Offer drawer, which has two tabs:

• Ghost Offers: existing Ghost Offers from your site, plus an option to create a new one.
• Outpost Promotions: existing Outpost Promotions organized by product, plus an option to create a new one.

To remove an offer from an action’s email, choose No Offer and save. Reusing an existing offer keeps your Ghost and Outpost offer lists clean and makes it easy to apply the same discount across multiple actions. See Ghost Offers vs Outpost Promotions for guidance on when to use each. The Offer cell shows what’s currently assigned: the offer’s terms when it’s active (for example, “Monthly (20% OFF)”), “Archived: ” followed by the terms if that Ghost Offer has since been archived, “Removed offer” if the assigned offer no longer exists in Ghost, or “No Offer” if nothing is assigned. At the bottom of the page, a red “Restore Default Templates and Actions” button resets every action and template in the Basic Autoresponder to factory defaults.

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Welcome Flow tab

These emails greet new members and encourage free subscribers to upgrade. If a free member converts to paid, the drip sequence automatically stops. Members can opt out of drip emails without unsubscribing from your Ghost newsletter.

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Paid section (1 action)

A combined welcome and thank-you for members who sign up directly as paid, skipping the free tier.

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Free section (5 actions, drip sequence)

A welcome drip series that progressively encourages free subscribers to upgrade. The single highest-impact lever for free-to-paid conversion. Spend time on these. Each email in the drip sequence can include a different discount offer. Sequences typically perform better when each step uses a steeper discount than the one before.

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Trial section (3 actions)

Trial subscriptions come in two flavors, and both fire this set of actions:

• Tier-wide trials: a tier is configured in Ghost with a default free-trial period, so everyone who signs up on that tier starts on a trial.
• Offer-based trials: a specific Outpost Promotion (or Ghost Offer) adds a trial to a single tier without making it the default for everyone.

This trial welcome flow is separate from the regular welcome flow, and it goes to readers whose trial is their first subscription with your site. They receive this trial reminder sequence instead of the standard paid welcome email; the trial sequence is the only welcome these readers get, and no separate welcome email is sent when the trial converts and they start paying. A reader who has subscribed before and later starts a new trial receives the standard paid welcome or upgrade thank-you right away instead of the trial sequence. A reader who cancels during the trial stops receiving the remaining trial reminders. These reminders use Auto-Spaced timing so they distribute evenly across whatever trial length applies: see About Auto-Spaced timing. You can override the first and third reminders to fixed timings (e.g., “send 24 hours before the trial ends”) if you want precise control; the middle reminder always stays Auto-Spaced so it lands sensibly regardless of trial length.

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Group Subscriptions section (2 actions)

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Institutional Subscription section (1 action)

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Gift Subscriptions tab

9 actions covering both the gift giver and the gift recipient: the initial thank-you and gift notification, repeat gifts for someone who already has an active gift, reminders that let the giver give again, and a nudge for the recipient to subscribe on their own. Rows 6 to 9 take their pricing from Subscriptions → Gift Subscriptions rather than from an Offer cell. Gift renewal price is what a giver is offered when they give again, and it covers rows 6, 7, and 8. Recipient conversion price is what the recipient is offered in row 9. Leave the renewal price empty and the giver pays what the original gift cost, or your Gift offer price if that price is no longer available in Stripe. Leave the conversion price empty and your Gift offer price is offered instead. Because both prices live in one place, changing one updates every gift reminder that uses it. Open any of these four templates under Email Settings → Templates and you’ll see the price as read-only text rather than an Offer field: Gift renewal price on rows 6 to 8, Recipient conversion price on row 9, each with a link back to Subscriptions → Gift Subscriptions. Row 9’s template is the only one of the four that includes an offer link, so if you attach a copy of it to an Advanced Autoresponder flow or an Email Campaigns campaign, you’ll see an Offer field there. That offer applies only to the copy you attached, never to the gift reminder itself. See Gift pricing. Rows 2 and 4 cover repeat gifts: someone gifting the same person again on the same tier. A repeat gift adds its term on top of the time the recipient has left, so their expiry moves further out and the recipient gets a “membership extended” email rather than the full first-gift welcome. The giver is thanked for extending rather than for starting something new. If either row is turned off, the matching first-gift email is sent in its place.

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Retention and Renewal tab

16 actions organized across 8 sections. This is the most critical tool for reducing voluntary churn.

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Renewal Thank You (1 action)

Thanks members who renewed for another year.

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Renewal Reminders (2 actions)

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Early Cancellation Acknowledgment (1 action)

When a subscriber cancels auto-renewal more than 45 days before their subscription expires, it usually means they simply don’t want to be auto-charged, not that they’re unhappy right now. Rather than hitting them with a hard-sell retention offer immediately, this email acknowledges their preference, confirms they won’t be auto-renewed, and lets them know to expect special offers as their expiration date approaches.

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Handling Cancellations with Retention Offers (7 actions)

We recommend offering an annual upgrade discount to monthly subscribers who cancel. Different discount levels are worth testing.

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Unsubscribes (2 actions)

Historically Ghost didn’t distinguish clearly between unsubscribing from email and cancelling auto-renewal. These emails surface that difference and confirm a full unsubscribe when one happens.

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Failed Payment Flow Thank You (1 action)

A short thank-you to a member who updated their card after a failed renewal.

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Card Reminders (1 action)

Stripe flags cards it predicts will fail at renewal. This action gives those members a chance to update before then. Stripe’s predictions aren’t always right; some flagged cards still work at renewal.

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Reactivations (1 action)

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Other tab

Actions covering upgrades, donations, nudges, group subscription management, and integration notifications.

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Thank You for Upgrades (4 actions)

Action 4 covers any move between tiers. Monthly and annual subscribers both receive it, and so does someone who moves to a less expensive tier. Write that template so it reads well for any of those moves. To stop these thank-yous reaching a particular member, apply the #Ignore_Upgrade label to that member. It silences all four of the actions in this section for them, not just action 4. See the labels reference.

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Donations (2 actions)

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Nudge (1 action)

An abandoned-cart message. Sent at most once every 30 days per subscriber. This action automatically uses the offer the reader originally clicked on.

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Group Subscriptions (5 actions)

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Integrations (6 actions)

Some integrations rely on a notification email to confirm or reflect access changes.

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Events tab

6 actions tied to the Events feature. Events require specialized code in your theme. Turning on Enable event emails in Event Settings switches all six of these actions on in one step, and turning it off switches all six off. No other setting does. If you switch a single event action off here afterwards, saving other settings in Event Settings won’t turn it back on. The two reminder rows show the send time you set in Event Settings. You can’t change the timing from this page. A row reads “Off” when your Number of reminders setting doesn’t include that reminder. Outpost doesn’t send the recap itself. Once an event with at least one registered member has ended, Outpost emails your staff a reminder to send a thank-you or recap to attendees from Ghost, including the label to target so only the people who registered receive it. That reminder goes out whether Enable event emails, this row, and The Big Off/On Button are on or off. Your staff also get a short checklist about two days before a published event starts, covering the registration count so far, adding the meeting link if the event needs one, and the label to target when you want to email everyone who registered. That reminder has no row on this tab.

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Complimentary tab

7 actions for managing complimentary (free gifted) subscriptions.

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Welcome (1 action)

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Site Owner Notifications (2 actions)

These emails go to your staff, not to the subscriber, so you can decide whether to extend or let the comp expire.

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Expiring Subscription Upsell (3 actions)

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Renewed Complimentary Notification (1 action)

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Frequently asked questions

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