TL;DRMastodon 4.6 adds email newsletters for creators, Collections for profile discovery, and redesigned profiles, all aimed at growing beyond 735K MAU.
Mastodon is betting that email, the oldest surviving communication protocol on the internet, can solve its biggest problem: reaching people who will never create a fediverse account. The open-source social network released version 4.6 on Tuesday, and its most strategically significant feature is the ability for creators to send their posts directly to email subscribers. People who want to follow a Mastodon account no longer need to join the platform, they just need an inbox.
The email newsletter feature is not turned on by default. Mastodon’s developers chose to restrict it because sending newsletters can, as the team put it in a blog post, “significantly rack up the costs of operating a Mastodon server.” Creators who want to use it need an assigned role with the correct permissions, which means they either run their own server, use one hosted by Mastodon’s paid institutional service, or negotiate access with their existing server operator.
That restriction is deliberate. Mastodon said the feature is primarily intended for institutional users, referencing the hosting and moderation services it began offering to organisations in September 2025. Clients already include the European Commission, the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, and the French city of Blois, though independent journalists and bloggers who operate their own servers can also use it.
