The Way The Verge Does the Email Digest

The Verge is a media publication focused on tech news, announcements, and reviews. That happens to be right up my alley, so I’ve been following them for several years now. I’ve always appreciated the breadth and quality of their coverage, and I can definitely recommend them to anyone searching for a similar source.

Unfortunately, over the past number of months, they’ve been locking more and more of their content behind a paid subscription. That’s understandable, of course, it’s hard for a media site to survive these days, with ad blockers and LLM summarisers eating into traffic, but still a bit disheartening. Whenever I was interested in one of their paywalled pieces, I usually just looked up coverage of the same topic elsewhere, or resorted to archival sites that tend to bypass paywalls pretty reliably.

Still, this has been going on for a while, and I haven’t been able to switch away completely. I like The Verge’s editorial style and their choice of topics. 404 Media comes close, but as an indie publication, their scope isn’t as wide, and they lean more toward tech-politics coverage (which The Verge also handles well). So when I stumbled upon their paywalled retrospective on the 10 years of the iPad Pro, I decided to bite the bullet and pay for a year of subscription.

To do so, The Verge first requires you to create an account. One of the steps involves choosing topics for your “email digest”. As a human living in 2025, already tired of the constant flood of irrelevant emails, I immediately started looking for a “don’t send me anything” checkbox. I use RSS feeds to manage my reading anyway. But there wasn’t one, so I reluctantly picked a few topics that seemed interesting and decided to unsubscribe later, once the first email inevitably arrived.

After signing up, I noticed something curious: I could immediately read the paywalled article, even without actually subscribing. The Verge must either have a multi-tiered access system (signed out, signed in, and paying users), or they quietly offer a sort of trial period. Either way, I wasn’t complaining, since I got to read what I came for.

When I finished the article, I saw a new “Follow topics and authors” panel at the bottom. It showed the article’s related topics, and I could follow or unfollow them right there. It also mentioned that my “following feed” would appear on The Verge’s front page which, sure enough, it did. Even better, I could follow specific authors, like David Pierce, whose coverage I always appreciate.

That’s when the gears started turning, and I realised what sold me on the whole daily digest idea. It didn’t exist just an excuse to spam my inbox, it actually meaningfully tailors my experience on the site, surfacing content that genuinely matches my interests both on and off the website. The digest also helps filter The Verge’s impressive daily output on general tech and media-related news down to the pieces that actually matter to me.

That makes this digest useful, which is a word I rarely associate with email newsletters. It feels like most sites use them to boost their engagement and retention metrics, showing you whatever they want to get your eyes on. The Verge, on the other hand, already has your subscription fee and topic preferences. So what they send you is what you are interested in reading, which in turn keeps you satisfied and subscribed.

It was a surprisingly different experience, seeing how a feature that’s usually just another annoyance can actually be designed in a thoughtful and genuinely helpful way. I’d still prefer a personalised RSS feed (like MacStories offers to their subscribers), but this feels like a solid halfway point.