💬 Introducing Comments

I’m thrilled to announce the launch of one of the most requested features to date—comments! And they’re available to everyone on beehiiv.

Let’s dig in… 

Why comments?

The top newsletters in the world are excellent at doing a few key things:

1. Creating engaging content that encourages further discussion

2. Leveraging their community to improve their newsletter (via feedback or growth)

While email replies are a tremendous channel for 1:1 communication with your readers, replies don’t leverage the full potential of the community so many of you are building.

By activating comments for your publication—you not only unlock another channel to communicate with your readers, but you also allow your readers to engage directly with each other.

I spoke to a few dozen writers about this and here are some of the top ways they’re looking to leverage comments:

• to receive immediate feedback on post content

• to give their audience an outlet to engage with each other

• to encourage further discussion

• to become a better writer

Getting started

Comments are available to everyone on beehiiv. Just toggle them on in your Website Settings here.

By enabling comments, all of your web content will automatically have a comment section located at the bottom of each post.

Once enabled, you’ll also be able to edit the visibility and reader-access to the comment section on a post by post basis.

Note: this option to edit on a per post basis is only available if you’re using our new editor.

Receiving comments

All active subscribers will have access to leave comments on the web version of your posts.

Any links to your website from your newsletter will automatically authenticate readers so they are logged in and able to comment immediately.

Pro tip: add a comment button by appending ?comments=true to the URL of the post and link to that. This will both authenticate readers and take them directly to a focused view of the comment section.

For example: I edited the slug of my post to be introducing-comments. That results in my full URL, including the ?comments=true part to be the following:

https://product.beehiiv.com/p/introducing-comments?comments=true

And to clarify—that is the URL I used to hyperlink the button.

Coming soon: quick-add buttons in the editor to add a comment button without having to manually create the URL.

Other things to note:

• All subscribers will be prompted to add their name the first time they comment, which will be used as their display name

• Anyone can reply to comments

• Readers can delete their own comments

Moderators and abuse

All publication admins are automatically assigned to be moderators for comments. Within each post, they’ll see two additional tabs: Comments and Comment Reports.

Moderators have the ability to:

• view deleted comments

• remove comments

• view comment reports

• ban readers from future commenting

Under the Comment Reports tab, moderators can view all reported comments and take one of the following actions:

• ignore the report

• remove the comment

• ban the subscriber from future commenting

  • on this specific post

  • on all publication posts

And at any time, moderators are able to lock the comment section for a post (i.e. prevent future comments) or hide the comment section altogether.

FAQ

How do readers update their profile picture?
They need to create a free Gravatar here.

Can I use the comment section if my content is not hosted on beehiiv?
Unfortunately comments are built directly into the web architecture of our beehiiv-hosted websites. You would need to use a custom plugin or create your own integration if you’re hosting your content on a different platform.

What about premium-only posts?
Comments will be paywalled and only available to paying subscribers, just like the rest of the content on the page.

Can I test the comment section from a test email?
Unfortunately no, because the URL is not yet live and accessible until you publish the post.  

Tutorial