One-Person Subscriptions

Documentation Index

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One-Person Subscriptions let you send a personalized subscription offer or invoice to a specific person. The link is locked to their email address — useful for special arrangements, sponsorships, direct sales, institutional deals, and invoicing group subscriptions where one buyer pays on behalf of a team or organization. You can either send a sign-up link (the recipient pays first, then access starts) or start the subscription immediately and bill via a Stripe invoice (access starts now, payment comes later). Go to Subscriptions → 1 Person Subscription to create personalized subscription links.

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Start on SignUp

Use this tab to send a special offer that is only good for the person you send it to. The subscription link is locked to the provided email address, and the subscription period starts once the person pays. After filling in the fields, click Build URL to generate the personalized subscription link. You can then:

• Copy the URL to share it manually
• Send an email directly from Outpost — Outpost drafts a subject line and body for you, and you can edit either before sending

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Start Immediately & Send Invoice

Use this tab when you want the subscription to start right away and bill the subscriber via a Stripe invoice. This is common for enterprise, institutional, or group deals where access is needed before payment is collected, or where the buyer needs an invoice for AP processing. When you click Generate Subscription, Invoice and Send Email, Outpost:

1. Creates the Stripe customer (and rebuilds the Ghost member if the email already exists)
2. Starts the subscription immediately on the selected plan
3. Generates a Stripe invoice with the payment terms you chose
4. Drafts an email to the recipient with the invoice link and your custom message
5. Lets you preview the invoice link, edit the email subject and body, and send when ready

The invoice appearance, logo, footer, memo, and payment methods come from your default invoice settings in Stripe — Outpost does not override them. Set those once in Stripe and every invoice you send through Outpost inherits them.

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Invoicing group subscriptions

If you pick a Group Subscription offer (selected from the second tab in the offer picker), the invoice covers the entire group plan. When the buyer pays, the subscription starts for them and seats the group with the included number of members. Use this for newsroom site licenses, team plans, classroom subscriptions, and any deal where one person pays for many. The group’s seat count and benefit are added to the invoice footer automatically so AP departments see exactly what’s included.

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Fields

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Pay by check

When you enable Allow people to pay by check, the email and invoice memo get appended with your check remittance instructions. The first time you enable this, Outpost will ask for your remit-to mailing address and save it on the blog so you don’t have to re-enter it later. This is common for institutional subscribers, libraries, and government buyers that require offline payment.

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Taxes — VAT, GST, sales tax

Outpost can apply VAT, GST/HST, and other taxes automatically when you invoice, by handing tax calculation off to Stripe. To make this work you need two things:

1. Tax must be configured upstream — either Stripe Tax is enabled on your Stripe account, or your products have tax rates configured in Stripe (or carried over from Ghost’s tax setup).
2. The buyer’s location must be on the invoice — turn on Add subscriber address fields and/or Add VAT number when generating the invoice. Stripe needs the address to determine the correct tax jurisdiction.

When you provide the buyer’s address or VAT ID, Outpost flags the invoice with automatic_tax: enabled so Stripe calculates and applies the right tax line. The buyer’s tax ID and address are saved to their Stripe customer record so future invoices on the same subscription bill correctly.

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Supported tax ID types

The Add VAT number field supports 25 tax ID types covering most major jurisdictions: EU VAT, UK VAT, US EIN, Australia ABN, Australia ARN, Brazil CNPJ, Brazil CPF, Canada BN, Canada GST/HST, Canada PST (BC/MB/SK), Canada QST, Switzerland VAT, Hong Kong BR, India GST, Japan CN, Japan RN, South Korea BRN, Mexico RFC, New Zealand GST, Norway VAT, Singapore GST, Singapore UEN, South Africa VAT. Pick the type from the dropdown, enter the number, and Stripe will validate the format and include it on the invoice.

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Existing Ghost members

If the email belongs to a Ghost member that already exists, Outpost shows a confirmation prompt before continuing. To re-sync the member with Stripe and start the new invoiced subscription cleanly, Outpost rebuilds the Ghost member — labels and newsletter subscriptions are preserved, but historical engagement data (which newsletters they opened, etc.) is reset. You can cancel out of this prompt if you’d rather not lose the history.

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Preview & send

Once the invoice is generated, Outpost shows you:

• The invoice URL — click it to preview the actual hosted Stripe invoice the recipient will see, or copy it to share manually
• A drafted email with subject and body — Outpost fills in the buyer’s first name, the offer name, the price/cadence, the due date, the link, any custom text you added, and your sign-off

Edit the subject or body in place, then click Send Email to dispatch it from Outpost. You can also skip the email entirely and just share the URL — the subscription and invoice still exist in Stripe either way.

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History

The History tab shows all previously created one-person subscription links and invoices, including:

• Date created and whether the email was sent (envelope icon — hover to see the email body)
• Type — signup, invoice, or prorate
• Recipient email
• Offer details (linked to the recipient checkout/invoice URL)
• Stripe invoice number (linked to the invoice in your Stripe dashboard)
• Subscription start date and payment date — if the type is invoice and there’s no payment date, the row shows Not Paid

Use this tab to see at a glance which invoices are outstanding and jump straight to the Stripe dashboard to mark a check payment as paid or chase up an overdue one.

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Frequently asked questions

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