How to Manage WordPress Comment Notification Emails

Comments help to drive discussion and user engagement on many blogs. However, WordPress doesn’t do such a great job when it comes to notifying users about comment activity.

Properly configured comment notification emails help you stay informed about new comments, improve user interactions, and can help you moderate comments.

At WPBeginner, we have used comments to build a strong community. By receiving instant notifications, we can quickly respond to build engagement and help our readers.

In this article, we will show you how to better manage WordPress comment notification emails and boost user activity on your website.

Why Improve WordPress Comment Notification Emails?

Comments are an important element of many websites, particularly on news sites and WordPress blogs. More comment activity means a more engaged audience, which results in more page views and, ultimately, more revenue.

However, the comment system that comes with every WordPress website is fairly limited. It sends comment notifications only to site administrators and article authors. Apart from that, there isn’t a default option for other site users to be notified of new comments.

Wouldn’t it be nice if users could get comment notifications for the posts they like or when someone replies to a comment they leave?

This will allow users to communicate with each other and drive more traffic to your blog. Plus, it can boost your SEO, as an active comment section indicates that your content is valuable and relevant.

That said, let’s examine how you can enhance the default WordPress comment system and notification emails to create a more engaging user experience on your website.

Here is an overview of the different topics we will cover in this article:

The Default Comment Notification Options in WordPress

By default, WordPress does not have an option to send notifications to commenters.

However, it does allow you to send email notifications to site administrators when a new comment is published and when a comment is held for moderation.

You can view these options by going to the Settings » Discussion page from your WordPress dashboard and navigating to the ‘Email me whenever’ section.

Both these notifications are only sent to the site administrators. However, WordPress also emails the post author about new comments.

If you get a lot of comments on your website, you might not want to receive email notifications for all comments held for moderation. You can simply uncheck the box here to disable those.

Once you are done, just click the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings.

How to Let Users Know When Their Comment Is Approved

If a user’s comment is held for moderation, they will see a message telling them so. However, they will have no idea whether you approve it or not without returning to your site.

Unfortunately, many of these users never return to your website to check, so they won’t ever know that you approved their comments.

You can fix this by using the Comment Approved Notifier Extended plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

The tool will notify users when their comment is approved by sending them an email.

It works right out of the box, and there are no additional settings you need to configure.

For details, see our tutorial on how to notify users when their comment is approved in WordPress.

How to Allow Users to Subscribe to Comments in WordPress

In addition to not knowing if their comment was approved, commenters on your website will not be notified about replies, either.

Once they leave a comment, they will have to manually visit your website again to see if someone has replied.

To solve this, you need to install and activate Thrive Comments. It is the best WordPress comments plugin on the market that lets you manage your comments with just a few clicks.

Upon plugin activation, visit the Thrive Dashboard » Thrive Comments page from the WordPress dashboard and expand the ‘Notifications’ tab.

Here, you must click the ‘Add New’ button to connect your website to an email marketing service and send notifications to comment subscribers.

Once you have done that, you can customize the notification messages users will receive when they leave a comment and someone replies to it or when a new comment or reply is added to a specific post.

To do this, click the ‘Customize Comment Notification’ option or the ‘Customize Post Notification’ option.

Once you are done, just click the ‘Save’ button to store your settings. Now, when you visit your WordPress site and scroll down to the comment section, you will see the ‘Subscribe to comments’ option at the bottom.

For detailed step-by-step instructions, see our article on how to allow users to subscribe to comments in WordPress.

How to Allow Users to Subscribe to Just Their Own Comments in WordPress

Many users may not want to receive notifications for all comments on an article. However, they may want to know if someone replied only to their own comments.

You can add this feature as well using the same Thrive Comments plugin. First, you’ll need to install and activate the plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Next, simply visit the Thrive Dashboard » Thrive Comments page in your WordPress dashboard and expand the ‘Notifications’ tab. After that, connect the plugin with an email marketing service using the ‘Add New’ button.

This will take you to another screen where you must choose an email delivery service from the dropdown menu.

Then, add the API key for the service and click the ‘Get Token’ button.

Once that is done, head back to the Thrive Comments page and expand the ‘Notifications’ tab again. Now, by default, the plugin automatically sends a notification when someone replies to a user’s comment.

However, you can also customize this message by clicking the ‘Customize Comment Notification’ button.

This will open a new prompt where you can edit the text of the email, change the email subject line, and more.

Once you are done, just click the ‘Save’ button to store your settings.

Now, users will be sent an email when someone replies to their comment on your blog.

For more details, see our article on how to notify users of replies to their own comments in WordPress.

How to Allow Authors to Subscribe to Other Author’s Posts

If you run a multi-author blog, then other authors may want to keep up with discussions across your website. If you already have comment subscriptions enabled, then each author can manually go and subscribe to comments.

However, if you want certain users to receive all comment notifications, then you can do this with the Better Notifications for WordPress plugin. For more details, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, head to the Notifications » Add New page from your WordPress dashboard and enter a title at the top.

Next, select ‘New Comment’ from the ‘Notification for’ dropdown menu. After that, simply add the user roles that will receive these notifications in the ‘Send To’ field.

The plugin also offers an option to send notifications to the post’s author and even exclude user roles from receiving email notifications for new comments.

Once you are done, check the ‘Notification Enabled’ option from the right and click the ‘Save’ button to store your changes.

How to Create Custom Comment Notifications in WordPress

Want to create your own custom comment notifications in WordPress? Custom notifications can allow you to replace the default WordPress notification with your own.

First, you will need to install and activate the Better Notifications for WordPress plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit the Notifications » Add New page from your WordPress admin panel to create your custom comment notifications.

You can edit the notifications for new comments, comments awaiting moderation, and comment replies. Additionally, you can send notifications to any user role or to individual users.

The plugin also lets you add email addresses manually that are not even connected to a user on the site.

You have the option to completely customize the comment notification sent by WordPress and use shortcodes inside the email text to add custom tags.

For more details, see our article on how to add better custom notifications in WordPress.

Bonus: Improve Deliverability of WordPress Email Notifications

All the above tips will fail if your WordPress site fails to send email notifications or if those emails are marked as spam by email providers.

To fix WordPress email issues and improve email deliverability, you need to install and activate WP Mail SMTP because it is the best SMTP plugin for WordPress.

For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, visit the Settings » WP Mail SMTP page to configure some settings.

The tool allows you to use SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) to send emails. SMTP is a much better and more reliable method than the default mail function used by WordPress.

Plus, it easily integrates with any email service that supports SMTP including your free Gmail account as well as Google Workspace, Mailgun, and SendGrid.

For details, see our article on how to use an SMTP server to send WordPress emails.

Other than that, you can also send test emails, view email logs, and track open rates with the plugin. For details, see our beginner’s guide on how to properly configure your WordPress email settings.

We hope this article helped you learn how to manage WordPress comment notification emails. You may also want to see our step-by-step guide on how to add reCAPTCHA to the WordPress comments form or our expert tips and tools to combat comment spam in WordPress.

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