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I'm planning to launch a newsletter soon for a site I own that gets a moderately decent amount of traffic. Here is a snippet of some handy things I've found: T

by tbran 6y ago

I'm planning to launch a newsletter soon for a site I own that gets a moderately decent amount of traffic. Here is a snippet of some handy things I've found: The cost of sending email is a lot on some platforms (Mailchimp is $30/month for 2500 subscribers and $50/month for 5000 subs), but a lot cheaper with Mailgun or Amazon SES. Sendy [0] and Mailcoach [1] are both self-hosted newsletter sending apps that use Mailgun/SES if you want to DIY. There is a handy blog post [2] from the creator of cron.weekly on his newsletter workflow. Don't put "weekly" in the newsletter name because then you're really setting that weekly expectation. At some point, you might not want to be publishing weekly unless you've got some serious automation happening. There are some interesting ideas on newsletter businesses on gaps.com [3]. A year ago I thought that a newsletter should link to my own content. But now? Many, many newsletters are link aggregators. [0] https://sendy.co/ https://sendy.co/ [1] https://mailcoach.app/ https://mailcoach.app/ [2] https://ma.ttias.be/how-to-cron-weekly-newsletter/ https://ma.ttias.be/how-to-cron-weekly-newsletter/ [3] https://gaps.com/six-figure-newsletter/ https://gaps.com/six-figure-newsletter/

drchopchop 6y ago
Note: do not attempt to use something a low-level as SES to send newsletters unless you understand all the plumbing that has to be built around it (unsubscribe/opt-out, bounce handling, click tracking, IP pools, DKIM/SPF, etc). This especially applies if your list is low-quality or old.
whycombagator 6y ago
For SES there is also this repo from freecodecamp[0]. And also Moon Mail[1][2]. I am sure there are more too. For a paid, non SES, option I personally like SendGrid[3] more than Mailgun. [0] https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/mail-for-good https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/mail-for-good [1] https://moonmail.io/ https://moonmail.io/ [2] https://github.com/MoonMail/MoonMail https://github.com/MoonMail/MoonMail [3] https://sendgrid.com/ https://sendgrid.com/
MR4D 6y ago
That last link is a helluva read! Thanks for sharing that and the others too.
coopsmgoops 6y ago
What are the limitations of just using Gmail or something? Paste in the email list from somewhere and off you go.

by tbran 6y ago

drchopchop 6y ago

Note: do not attempt to use something a low-level as SES to send newsletters unless you understand all the plumbing that has to be built around it (unsubscribe/opt-out, bounce handling, click tracking, IP pools, DKIM/SPF, etc). This especially applies if your list is low-quality or old.

whycombagator 6y ago

For SES there is also this repo from freecodecamp[0]. And also Moon Mail[1][2]. I am sure there are more too. For a paid, non SES, option I personally like SendGrid[3] more than Mailgun. [0] https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/mail-for-good https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/mail-for-good [1] https://moonmail.io/ https://moonmail.io/ [2] https://github.com/MoonMail/MoonMail https://github.com/MoonMail/MoonMail [3] https://sendgrid.com/ https://sendgrid.com/

MR4D 6y ago

That last link is a helluva read! Thanks for sharing that and the others too.

coopsmgoops 6y ago

What are the limitations of just using Gmail or something? Paste in the email list from somewhere and off you go.