Blog · Product
Why we cap email blasts at 5 per event
By DIY Stubs · published May 28, 2026
Every DIY Stubs event can send up to 5 email announcements to buyers who opted in. We are keeping it at 5. The cap protects buyers' inboxes and the sending reputation every organizer on DIY Stubs shares. We get asked to raise it, and the asks are reasonable. Here is the reasoning, and how to get the most from five.
The simple reason: it is for the buyer
A buyer signed up for one event. They expected an order confirmation, a ticket, and probably one or two reminders. They did not sign up for a marketing list. Past five emails about the same event, the buyer stops reading and starts marking them as junk. The next email goes to spam, and you lose the channel.
That is true, but it is not the whole reason.
The bigger reason: shared sender reputation
Email is a network. Every email DIY Stubs sends on behalf of an organizer goes out from the same sending infrastructure. Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, and the rest score that infrastructure. If too many emails from our sending domains get marked as spam, deliverability drops for every organizer using DIY Stubs.
When a single organizer sends ten "are you coming??" blasts over two weeks and a chunk of their audience marks the email as junk, that hurts another organizer who is doing things right. The reputational damage is shared even though the bad behavior is not.
We can either trust every organizer to self-regulate, or we can set a cap that protects the network. We picked the cap.
Constraints force editing
The email you send because you are anxious about ticket sales is rarely the email that drives ticket sales. The email that drives ticket sales is the one with new information that the buyer needs. Set times. A surprise opener. A weather change. A confirmed merch table.
With no limit, it is easy to send a blast every time you feel anxious. When you have five, you stop and think: is this worth one of my five? Most of the time, the answer is no. The email does not get sent. The buyer's inbox is less cluttered. The emails you do send are better.
The cap makes you edit. We think that is how good email works in general. The cap just makes it visible.
Why five is plenty
Organizers on DIY Stubs typically use about three blasts per event, well under the cap. Here is how five maps to a real event cycle:
- Set times, about a week out. Doors, opener, headliner, what time to show up.
- Week-of news, if there is any. Surprise opener, merch update, venue logistical change. Skip if nothing new.
- Day-of reminder, morning of show. Doors at 8, QR ticket is in this thread, see you tonight.
- Night-of update, if needed. "Doors delayed 30 minutes" or "the parking lot is closed, use the structure across the street". Most shows do not need this. Some do. (If you change the event's date, time, or venue, we email buyers automatically and it does not count.)
- Thank-you, day after. Photos, what is next, mailing list signup if you have one. The most valuable blast you will send.
That is five. You can drop any of the middle three on shows that do not need them and keep spares. We have not heard a case for a sixth that better planning of the first five would not solve. For the full how-to, see Email blasts that help your show.
"But what about ticket sales reminders during the on-sale?"
Blasts on DIY Stubs go to buyers who opted in, which means people who already have tickets. Sending them "buy tickets" emails is the clearest example of what the cap prevents. Use your own audience channels (mailing list, Instagram, your existing list of contacts) to reach people who have not bought yet. Use DIY Stubs blasts to communicate with the people who did.
"But I am running a multi-week festival."
Multi-week and multi-day events benefit from planning the blasts ahead of time and treating them like a content calendar. Five blasts spread across three weeks is one a week, with two in reserve for real-time updates. That is a lot of communication if each one has news.
"What about offering a paid tier for more blasts?"
We thought about it and decided no. The cost of bad email is paid by other organizers, through worse deliverability, not by the organizer who sent it. A paid tier would still push that cost onto everyone else.
If your event needs more than 5 emails, the right tool is your own mailing list and your own sending domain (built on something like Klaviyo or Mailchimp), where the deliverability consequences land on you and your domain, not on the rest of the DIY Stubs network.
The cap stays
We hear the request and the reasons, and we are keeping it at 5. The cap does real work for every organizer and every buyer on DIY Stubs. Plan your five early and it stops feeling like a limit.