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Ask HN: Is it just me, or is the inbox is the worst place for newsletters?

132 points by ahmd 5y ago

Is it just me, or do you believe your inbox is the worst place for newsletters? Any other medium would be preferable.

edisonywh 5y ago
I kept missing my newsletters and that annoyed me to an extent where I decided to build my own solution: https://slickinbox.com/ https://slickinbox.com/, Slick Inbox provides you an email that you can use to subscribe to newsletters, and the app is built for reading newsletters. There are other services out there like Stoop Inbox, Feedly & Feedbin that also does the same thing, but point being that I think newsletters are fundamentally different from an "email" and thus deserve a special treatment (similar to how Podcasts are just RSS feed underneath, but it's fundamentally a different product)
hidden-spyder 5y ago
It is! I now use Kill the Newsletter [0] for those newsletters that don't offer an RSS feed. [0] https://kill-the-newsletter.com/ https://kill-the-newsletter.com/
brandrick 5y ago
Depends on the type on newsletter I'd say. I find a lot of newsletters now are just blog posts that yes, would be better served elsewhere (especially those with little or no web archive/presence). A lot of great writing hidden away I feel. However, curated newsletters with round-ups/link lists, I feel are great in email. I can tag them, stick them in a folder, and peruse at my leisure. However, if you're big on RSS this too may have limited appeal.
TheFreim 5y ago
myemail+newsletter@example.com Filter it out so it doesn't get in the way, read them when you want to (still generally dislike newsletters in email, rss is nicer)
- adamcstephens 5y ago
  I filter mine as well, and use Fastmail’s snooze to only have them show up once a day. I used to use rss heavily, but it has been many years since I regularly checked a client. At least with email delivery I don’t miss them.
  - TheFreim 5y ago
    I find that with most newsletters I don't really care about what's new or has changed. It's only when I actually need to use X product or do Y thing that I like to know what's new. This makes RSS nice since I can go weeks and then when I need to work on something using a tool I can check the news for that item. It depends, of course. Some things I appreciate having it sent daily, others I really don't. There isn't a one size fits all solution and that's not a bad thing.
rodelrod 5y ago
Thankfully, Substack provides an RSS feed. If there's no RSS, I don't subscribe. In the future I might try Kill the Newsletter as suggested in another comment.
Glench 5y ago
I switched all my email newsletters to RSS newsletters with https://kill-the-newsletter.com https://kill-the-newsletter.com and my life has gotten so much better. I was inspired by the design of Hey email, whose designers reasoned that newsletters aren't really that important, they should just be something you scroll through and separate from other email which often needs a response.
andybak 5y ago
How do I get notified of a new newsletter? For me my Inbox is the only place I'm guaranteed to visit regularly. If a notification is on any other platform then I might not ever know about it. But then - you haven't really explained what you mean. Do you mean in terms of rendering? notifications, sharing? And it depends on your relationship to email vs other platforms. Tell us more about your reasoning.
- rodelrod 5y ago
  > How do I get notified of a new newsletter? Not OP but I use Inoreader for RSS. It has push notifications in the paid version, although I don't need them, I just open Inoreader when I'm in a newsletter-reading mood. > Tell us more about your reasoning. The reason email does not work for me is that my email inbox is overflowing with a variety of types of communication: business emails that require a quick reply, unsolicited sales pitches, notifications from several services, personal emails. I need to go through each email rapidly and either reply immediately, snooze it for later, create an action item in the my to-do list, give a quick read and archive or just straight out archive without reading. There's no place in this for "take 40 minutes to leisurely read this long-form email". Also the volume of communications is way to big to go through all of them and mark them for later reading. I imagine I could create rules for all the newsletters and send them straight to some folder but then the experience is just lacking compared to a dedicated RSS reader.
  - andybak 5y ago
    OK. (on a side note this is "Inbox bundles" solved elegantly in Google Inbox RIP) Anyway - I too have an overflowing inbox. I used to aim for Inbox zero but slipped and am living with it. One discipline I do maintain though is that the Inbox should always be actionable. It's my todo list. So - how do I handle non-actionable, non-urgent stuff? 1. If it will be urgent and actionable I snooze it. 2. If it's of interest but not urgent and has a web representation then I open a browser tab for later. Newsletters nearly always fall into category 2. Unless I can just skim them for interesting links and archive them. And a lot of the time I unsubscribe - as soon as I realise I don't really want to read it. I get most of my news from HN or various subreddits. I think there's about 3 or 4 regular newsletters I tolerate. And I'm more tolerant of infrequent emails (new features for products I'm interested in etc)
troydavis 5y ago
My RSS reader service also provides an email address for email-only subscriptions: https://feedbin.com/blog/2016/02/03/subscribe-to-email-newsletters-in-feedbin/ https://feedbin.com/blog/2016/02/03/subscribe-to-email-newsl... . I read email newsletters in the same place as RSS. I'm subscribed to a few low-volume Twitter searches too (https://feedbin.com/blog/2018/01/11/feedbin-is-the-best-way-to-read-twitter/ https://feedbin.com/blog/2018/01/11/feedbin-is-the-best-way-...).
- graeme 5y ago
  Woah thank you. I was looking for something like this but couldn’t find the right service. This looks great.
- ajot 5y ago
  I use Kill the newsletter for that purpose, as my RSS reader is client-side https://kill-the-newsletter.com/ https://kill-the-newsletter.com/ https://github.com/leafac/kill-the-newsletter https://github.com/leafac/kill-the-newsletter
  - soheilpro 5y ago
    Same here.
    - genzer 5y ago
      I just tried using Kill the Newsletter! on Farnam Street [1] and the experience was awesome. Simple, fast, free and no ads. Thanks for introducing a very good tool! [1]: https://fs.blog/ https://fs.blog/
  - docdeek 5y ago
    Looks like a great tool - thanks for sharing.
- Semiapies 5y ago
  I do the same thing with Feedbin. It's delightful.
OwlsParlay 5y ago
This is exactly what RSS feeds were for. In fact Outlook and other mail programs support RSS feeds alongside e-mail. Maybe Google should have integrated Reader into Gmail instead of dropping support for it.
ianwalter 5y ago
I'm trying to switch my newsletters over to Feedbin but it's a slow process.
moltar 5y ago
I use Kill The Newsletter to sub via RSS to all newsletters I want to read.
aethertron 5y ago
My inbox a good place for me to learn about the existence of a new issue of something, but a poor place to actually read said issues, to keep track of what I've read, and manage a 'library'. I want e-reader-like features: - save my place - highlighting - annotations Should these features be added to Gmail? I trow not. Better to have these newsletter issues converted to some appropriate format and sent to my library, along with my ebooks and saved web pages.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
vcavallo 5y ago
I set up a newsletters email folder with automatic filtering. When I feel like reading newsletters, I go there. Otherwise, I don’t see them. Sort of the same behavior loop of opening up my RSS feed (which, incidentally, is how I’m seeing this post).
deergomoo 5y ago
I don't mind, although I don't get a lot of email. Maybe like 10 a day, and most of that is just receipts/invoices/confirmations which can be immediately archived. So in fact my inbox is usually about 90% newsletters that I haven't read yet.
- andybak 5y ago
  So - you don't use email for communication with actual people? Do you mind me asking roughly how old you are? I would like to test my theory that email is generational and it's only the over-(insert number here) that still use it as it was originally intended.
  - oskarc 5y ago
    I am not the author of the comment, but I am 19 and only communication that I am doing through mail is related with support/feedback/employment. Also after I got a job as intern webdev (I don't even like it), we've been communicating via Slack. Also I saw that friends of mine have Discord/MS Teams/Telegram(!) as main communication service in companies. So, I am also getting a few mails per day, and most of them are invoices, notifications that I don't need to see immediately, newsletters, etc.
  - deergomoo 5y ago
    > So - you don't use email for communication with actual people? Nope! I may be cheating somewhat as I'm not counting work communication here, which does involve a decent amount of email, but I only access that inbox through a web browser so I can easily close the tab and be done for the day. I'm also not getting any newsletters to my work inbox. > Do you mind me asking roughly how old you are? I would like to test my theory that email is generational and it's only the over-(insert number here) that still use it as it was originally intended I'm 28. All my communication is via messaging apps (iMessage for family as we all have iPhones; WhatsApp for almost everyone else), so I suspect your theory is probably right!
    - andybak 5y ago
      Follow up question. I find the problem with messaging services is that there's no central inbox and no decent handling of "unread". If I get an instant message from someone that I can't (or choose not to) respond to immediately, then the chances are very high that I'll forget to respond. But with email it stays in my inbox and I can easily set it back to "unread" for extra emphasis. I find I'm terrible at keeping up with messaging unless it's synchronous chatting. Anything asynchronous goes out the window. I suppose I just find everything else lacking in features that I've come to depend on in email. I just don't understand how everyone else manages.
andymitchell 5y ago
My Gmail plugin is coming from the same pain (I subscribed to a ton of great newsletters, but they clutter everything human): https://www.getbreef.com https://www.getbreef.com . It's just my side project, and it's in beta - let me know if you'd like to try it. It gives desktop Gmail an RSS-esque topic view of your inbox, and lets you infinite scroll through emails like you would Twitter or Insta.
jasode 5y ago
Probably multiple forces affect sending newsletters to email inbox: - Client-side motivation : some users want to use their email as the "universal inbox". E.g. They may also send TODOs/reminders by sending emails to themselves instead of a separate app for alarms. Newsletters are just another stream of info that should conveniently go into their universal inbox. - Publisher-side motivation: email addresses are valuable because it's important to "build an audience" outside of centralized platforms like Patreon/Youtube/TikTok. RSS doesn't solve the same problem because that's a "pull" mechanism instead of "push" like email. If the above factors are unimportant to a particular person, then yes, the email inbox is a suboptimal communications channel for newsletters.
- Sharlin 5y ago
  The absolutely most important reason: everyone has an email address. It’s not just the least common denominator, it’s pretty much the only common denominator. RSS practically does not exist outside the tech scene.
  - rhn_mk1 5y ago
    Everyone having an email address is a false assumption, or a bad generalization. There are people among us without one, and owning a phone number instead. I'm not sure along which lines the divide falls though. Younger? Less western? Less businessy? It's still possible that the people who would be interested in a newsletter are the same people who have email addresses.
    - Sharlin 5y ago
      I used the word "everyone" rhetorically, of course. The point is, to a first (and second) approximation everybody uses email and nobody uses RSS.
    - easrng 5y ago
      If you have a phone number, you probably have an email through a SMS/MMS gateway.
jp57 5y ago
I use NetNewsWire (Mac, IOS) to subscribe to substacks RSS feeds. Free posts appear right in the app. You have to click through to read subscriber-only posts in the browser. It has several options for syncing your feeds' state between devices. (iCloud, Feedly, etc)
SamWhited 5y ago
As others have said, I use an RSS reader for this sort of thing. Many newsletters provide a blog/syndicated version anyways which I can subscribe to, and there are bridges available. That being said, I don't have a bridge so for ones that are only available by email I setup filters and put them into folders unless I want to read them every single week (in which case I do think the inbox it the best place). If you do decide to go the RSS route, I use https://www.inoreader.com https://www.inoreader.com and haven't found a better web-based/has a phone app one yet. The others I tried were all full of nonsense AI that kept bugging me, or weird javascripty fancy UIs that broke, or just didn't let me read inline (you had to click through to pages). Other recommendations welcome though.
mvexel 5y ago
Filter by presence of header List-Id takes care of bypassing your inbox for most any list-like email.
corobo 5y ago
It is not you, RSS etc etc like the other comments Feedly and Unread (iOS app) are my poison of choice. Lovely interface on top of a reliable service. Unread also does an instapaper-like parse of the article if you subscribe to a feed that does that daft excerpt only thing :)
hsn915 5y ago
Newsletters use email because it's much more likely to stay operational for longer into the future than any other random web service. It's a source of power. If they don't have your email, then they can't contact you in the future if the platform decides to kick them out.
deregulateMed 5y ago
I'm on the other side of the issue. I have 10000 subscribers with a 0.6% Spam rate. That's technically high, despite me getting all emails voluntarily and not even offering a freebie for signing up. Anyway, can't use Facebook/IG/Reddit/Twitter because of the algorithm. Can't email more than 4 times a year due to spam filters. I still pay hundreds of dollars a year to reach people via email octopus and Amazon.... And it still goes to Gmail spam. This is not the internet I grew up with.
- 0_____0 5y ago
  How is it that you're limited to 4x/year whereas many vendors will happily send me marketing email once a week without issue?
  - deregulateMed 5y ago
    If you are bombarded with emails, you either unsubscribe or you let them keep coming. Even if lots of people mark as spam, the number of emails not marked as spam greatly outnumber the spam emails. It seems you can either email occasionally or email weekly. The current system is not set up for monthly emails. My content takes weeks to produce. I'm also a bit skeptical that Gmail treats all domains equal. I imagine HBO/Joann Fabrics/etc... has a deal to spam people, where I do not.
  - Ensorceled 5y ago
    Not enough people are marking those as spam ...
  - prawn 5y ago
    I get emails through to my GSuite inbox from senders that I've marked as spam repeatedly (10+ times). Same from email. Same subject style and format. And they still get through. Makes me really curious about what they're doing to get through. 90% of the spam that escapes my spam folder is web design pitches from email addresses of the format firstnamelastname123@gmail.com - always GMail...
- jfengel 5y ago
  I'm curious: how do you learn your spam rate?
tern 5y ago
I recently switched to https://www.hey.com/ https://www.hey.com/ for email, which provides a dedicated page for reading newsletters. I didn't like it at first, but after comparing in depth with Gmail and Superhuman I prefer the workflow. Having separate interfaces for communications, feeds, and automated emails has been great.
- theoblank 5y ago
  I use HEY for all my personal email now too. I definitely believe it's a step in the right direction.
m-p-3 5y ago
I use an email address provided by Inoreader to get all my newsletters along my RSS feeds. Unfortunately some newsletters are tied to my user account and my main email address for some services, so I had to do an email forward rule in Gmail for those for them to skip my inbox.
sandworm101 5y ago
Ill take a crowded inbox over the previous system: a crowded post box. At least i can throw spam blockers and other tools at the problem. Setting roadblocks to catch postal trucks is a federal offence.
pwinnski 5y ago
It's clearly not just you, based on the other comments, but I use my RSS Reader (InoReader) for quicker bits of reading/scanning/art/comics, so email works just right for me. I have filters for each newsletter, so I don't actually think of it much as "email," but as "let me go check and see which newsletters have new issues to read today now that I have time for newsletter reading." Checking just now, there are 18 individual titles under my "Lists" heading in Fastmail, of which six are bold, indicating something new to read. For me, sending those newsletters to RSS would be a step backward, and having to remember to go visit the websites in question would be two steps backward, so I guess I'm the target market for the status quo!
Ensorceled 5y ago
I get multiple newsletters in my inbox; some are daily, some weekly, some randomly. It takes no time at all to scan them, decide if there is anything useful and then delete, flag to be read or "save to pocket". I read the more interesting newsletters or linked articles at my leisure. Works perfect for me.
tpoacher 5y ago
My problem is not newsletters. I happily send those to a Newsletters folder via a filter. My problem is companies sending important non-newsletter stuff in a way that is virtually indistinguishable from a filter point of view to their newsletter emails.
hiidrew 5y ago
One of the features I liked about Hey but as a broke graduate student couldn't justify that cost. Easy to replicate in Gmail though: create a folder/label, filter to skip the inbox, mark as read, and go into the desired folder. Boom you have a newsfeed specific to your newsletters.
ahmd 5y ago
email newsletter are to me just a “blog posts with email notification”, they are difficult to filter, difficult to search and makes the inbox filled with less important stuff, i think there is a gap in the market for some sort of a solution, maybe a service that sends all your newsletters to “Notion” so you can search them ;) what do you think?
nkotov 5y ago
I just stopped reading email newsletter in general. Currently sitting at 307 emails unread in the newsletters folder. I have a tab folder that I launch every morning when I drink my coffee and prep for the day. It contains HN, local news, tech news, several subreddits, and YC related stuff. I wish there was a digestible way to gather my top 20 so that I don't manually go through all that information while drinking my coffee in the morning.
- CarelessExpert 5y ago
  > I wish there was a digestible way to gather my top 20 so that I don't manually go through all that information while drinking my coffee in the morning. You know, it's likely most if not all of that can be fed into an RSS reader...
dash2 5y ago
I like having newsletters in my inbox. It gives me something nice to read among all the spam, work and other junk.
ssss11 5y ago
The marketers believe its best place for their newsletters so you gotta convince them why we’ll bother looking somewhere else.
hansy 5y ago
I can give you some data from my own newsletter [1]. Newsletter supports both RSS and Pocket as alternative sources for newsletter issues. ~200 subscribers ~6% accessed their RSS URL within the last week <1% authenticated with Pocket [1] https://funnies.page https://funnies.page
crazygringo 5y ago
I need everything to go to my inbox, including newsletters. It's the only place I'm guaranteed to look besides SMS and my calendar. Then I just process them together with everything else -- take a quick glance at headlines, archive if nothing interesting, keep it in my inbox if I want to read it sometime today, label it if it seems long and I want to keep it for later reading at leisure. The last thing I want is yet another delivery mechanism I have to check. If you have a problem with e-mail overload, it's not going to be solved by adding another information source. It's going to be solved by tackling it head-on in your e-mail, and there are lots of methods.
long11l 5y ago
I just don't read them, they are.AAL is pointless
coffeefirst 5y ago
Not at all. Any other medium would be a blog with RSS. I set my email up to automatically snooze all newsletters to 8am the next day. Every morning I have a bundle. I read most of it, skip some, and then I'm done for the day. The signal to noise ratio is pretty good, and more importantly its finite. I honestly can't imagine going back to scrolling newsfeeds or refreshing sites throughout the day.
andreyk 5y ago
I like it - since I do inbox zero, it makes it easy to see them without going to another app.
CarelessExpert 5y ago
I'm a selfhosting nerd so I use Huginn to scrape the newsletters from my email and turn them into RSS feeds that I consume by converting them into an e-newspaper with Calibre. I also use ttrss's feature to republish articles via an RSS feed, plus Wallabag and it's RSS, to get bundles of long form content onto my Kindle. My Saturday morning ritual is then to open Calibre and download the last week's worth of Matt Levine newsletters to my Kindle, which I then enjoy on my porch with a coffee.
- daxaxelrod 5y ago
  I dont know why but this reminds me of the classic HN counter argument to Dropbox. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 Maybe there's a webapp here...
  - CarelessExpert 5y ago
    Oh 100%. What I'm doing is not for the feint of heart. For me it's as much for the joy of the project, though I do really like the power and customizability of the stack I've put together. I'm also a privacy wonk and I like having full control over my data, not to mention the content I'm consuming. But yeah, I won't claim this is for everyone. But for those interested in a DIY project it's working great for me!
    - daxaxelrod 5y ago
      Love it, more power to ya :)
- kazinator 5y ago
  OK, but suppose someone were to scrape newsletters from their e-mail and turn them into RSS feeds, just like you do. But then, suppose they just behave like a typical RSS user and read these with a feed reader. A stereotypical RSS feed reader which implements an inbox-like paradigm, where you see feeds as folders, which show a count like (3) of new unread items. What would be the point? (What you're doing makes sense to you because of the additional steps that are enabled, like conversion into e-newspaper and whatnot. In principle, at least, a mail client could do the same thing, without requiring round trip out to RSS.)
cinntaile 5y ago
I have a mail address specifically for news letters I subscribe to, so it's like a physical mailbox with my subscription magazines dropping in every now and then. If the newsletter is worth reading, I don't mind reading it in my inbox. The problem is that most newsletters are a waste of energy and then the inbox becomes a place where the newsletters go to die. Once I notice this pattern I unsubscribe from those newsletters. This leaves me with an inbox with mostly high quality newsletters.
SllX 5y ago
Yes, which is why I have a rule setup to forward to Instapaper.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
benfrancom 5y ago
I've found that most places offer the same content in an RSS feed as their newsletter. I prefer the terminal newsboat RSS reader running in Docker. : https://newsboat.org/ https://newsboat.org/ https://github.com/newsboat/newsboat https://github.com/newsboat/newsboat ...and lynx is also in the container for browsing.
gherkinnn 5y ago
I use Hey as my main email client and make good use of its feed category, a dedicated inbox for newsletters. I wish it would offer more "reader" options, but other than that it works. Works.
igammarays 5y ago
No, I prefer my newsletters to my inbox over anywhere else. I have an inbox zero workflow, so if I don't have time for in-depth item right away, I print it or save a PDF to my iPad reading list for later review.
TameAntelope 5y ago
Feedly has a newsletter feature that I use for a few of my subscriptions, but yeah generally I agree. Inbox/Email is for people reaching out to me directly, not for general Internet things.
ayush--s 5y ago
I was in the same boat - until I jumped over to RSS feeds using a selfhosted Miniflux instance.
dsr_ 5y ago
Different media have different affordances and cultures. I happen to think: email is for discussion with people, and occasionally for notifications/reminders chat systems are for talking in near-realtime Usenet is for long slow public conversations forums are like Usenet but worse for reading RSS is for reading periodic content - comics, newspaper articles, magazine articles, columns, blogs Newsletters are clearly periodic content, so RSS is the way.
GrinningFool 5y ago
Somewhat OT - but are there any good technical newsletters where the full content is in the actual email?
kureikain 5y ago
I like email as news letter though. It is decentralize. I can read on any platform, anywhere, search going back. flag, move them around in my folder however i want
- omegalulw 5y ago
  With email you also don't have to check 10 things every day.
hollander 5y ago
Facebook was the place for newsletters for me. I didn't do much on a personal level, but it was an OK place to follow stuff.
notJim 5y ago
I actually like it. I'm in the habit of checking my email regularly, so this allows me to consume the content I subscribe to without needing to build a new habit/ritual. Not saying everyone has to do things my way, just saying why I like it.
jjav 5y ago
Email is the optimal mechanism for any newsletter I care to receive. I get it with no effort (no need to go anywhere else) and it's there in my email reader for whenever I have the time for it.
tpl 5y ago
RSS is great for content like newsletters. Though I must admit with filtering I find an email inbox works great too.
Eugeleo 5y ago
I found that the problem with newsletters is that there are too many too often. I discovered Mailbrew (https://mailbrew.com/ https://mailbrew.com/) a while back and it solved this problem for me — together with “newsletterifying” a few of other content channels, like Twitter and HN.

132 points by ahmd 5y ago

Is it just me, or do you believe your inbox is the worst place for newsletters? Any other medium would be preferable.

I kept missing my newsletters and that annoyed me to an extent where I decided to build my own solution: https://slickinbox.com/ https://slickinbox.com/, Slick Inbox provides you an email that you can use to subscribe to newsletters, and the app is built for reading newsletters. There are other services out there like Stoop Inbox, Feedly & Feedbin that also does the same thing, but point being that I think newsletters are fundamentally different from an "email" and thus deserve a special treatment (similar to how Podcasts are just RSS feed underneath, but it's fundamentally a different product)

hidden-spyder 5y ago

It is! I now use Kill the Newsletter [0] for those newsletters that don't offer an RSS feed. [0] https://kill-the-newsletter.com/ https://kill-the-newsletter.com/

brandrick 5y ago

Depends on the type on newsletter I'd say. I find a lot of newsletters now are just blog posts that yes, would be better served elsewhere (especially those with little or no web archive/presence). A lot of great writing hidden away I feel. However, curated newsletters with round-ups/link lists, I feel are great in email. I can tag them, stick them in a folder, and peruse at my leisure. However, if you're big on RSS this too may have limited appeal.

TheFreim 5y ago

myemail+newsletter@example.com Filter it out so it doesn't get in the way, read them when you want to (still generally dislike newsletters in email, rss is nicer)

adamcstephens 5y ago
I filter mine as well, and use Fastmail’s snooze to only have them show up once a day. I used to use rss heavily, but it has been many years since I regularly checked a client. At least with email delivery I don’t miss them.
- TheFreim 5y ago
  I find that with most newsletters I don't really care about what's new or has changed. It's only when I actually need to use X product or do Y thing that I like to know what's new. This makes RSS nice since I can go weeks and then when I need to work on something using a tool I can check the news for that item. It depends, of course. Some things I appreciate having it sent daily, others I really don't. There isn't a one size fits all solution and that's not a bad thing.

rodelrod 5y ago

Thankfully, Substack provides an RSS feed. If there's no RSS, I don't subscribe. In the future I might try Kill the Newsletter as suggested in another comment.

Glench 5y ago

I switched all my email newsletters to RSS newsletters with https://kill-the-newsletter.com https://kill-the-newsletter.com and my life has gotten so much better. I was inspired by the design of Hey email, whose designers reasoned that newsletters aren't really that important, they should just be something you scroll through and separate from other email which often needs a response.

andybak 5y ago

How do I get notified of a new newsletter? For me my Inbox is the only place I'm guaranteed to visit regularly. If a notification is on any other platform then I might not ever know about it. But then - you haven't really explained what you mean. Do you mean in terms of rendering? notifications, sharing? And it depends on your relationship to email vs other platforms. Tell us more about your reasoning.

rodelrod 5y ago
> How do I get notified of a new newsletter? Not OP but I use Inoreader for RSS. It has push notifications in the paid version, although I don't need them, I just open Inoreader when I'm in a newsletter-reading mood. > Tell us more about your reasoning. The reason email does not work for me is that my email inbox is overflowing with a variety of types of communication: business emails that require a quick reply, unsolicited sales pitches, notifications from several services, personal emails. I need to go through each email rapidly and either reply immediately, snooze it for later, create an action item in the my to-do list, give a quick read and archive or just straight out archive without reading. There's no place in this for "take 40 minutes to leisurely read this long-form email". Also the volume of communications is way to big to go through all of them and mark them for later reading. I imagine I could create rules for all the newsletters and send them straight to some folder but then the experience is just lacking compared to a dedicated RSS reader.
- andybak 5y ago
  OK. (on a side note this is "Inbox bundles" solved elegantly in Google Inbox RIP) Anyway - I too have an overflowing inbox. I used to aim for Inbox zero but slipped and am living with it. One discipline I do maintain though is that the Inbox should always be actionable. It's my todo list. So - how do I handle non-actionable, non-urgent stuff? 1. If it will be urgent and actionable I snooze it. 2. If it's of interest but not urgent and has a web representation then I open a browser tab for later. Newsletters nearly always fall into category 2. Unless I can just skim them for interesting links and archive them. And a lot of the time I unsubscribe - as soon as I realise I don't really want to read it. I get most of my news from HN or various subreddits. I think there's about 3 or 4 regular newsletters I tolerate. And I'm more tolerant of infrequent emails (new features for products I'm interested in etc)

troydavis 5y ago

My RSS reader service also provides an email address for email-only subscriptions: https://feedbin.com/blog/2016/02/03/subscribe-to-email-newsletters-in-feedbin/ https://feedbin.com/blog/2016/02/03/subscribe-to-email-newsl... . I read email newsletters in the same place as RSS. I'm subscribed to a few low-volume Twitter searches too (https://feedbin.com/blog/2018/01/11/feedbin-is-the-best-way-to-read-twitter/ https://feedbin.com/blog/2018/01/11/feedbin-is-the-best-way-...).

graeme 5y ago
Woah thank you. I was looking for something like this but couldn’t find the right service. This looks great.
ajot 5y ago
I use Kill the newsletter for that purpose, as my RSS reader is client-side https://kill-the-newsletter.com/ https://kill-the-newsletter.com/ https://github.com/leafac/kill-the-newsletter https://github.com/leafac/kill-the-newsletter
- soheilpro 5y ago
  Same here.
  - genzer 5y ago
    I just tried using Kill the Newsletter! on Farnam Street [1] and the experience was awesome. Simple, fast, free and no ads. Thanks for introducing a very good tool! [1]: https://fs.blog/ https://fs.blog/
- docdeek 5y ago
  Looks like a great tool - thanks for sharing.
Semiapies 5y ago
I do the same thing with Feedbin. It's delightful.

OwlsParlay 5y ago

This is exactly what RSS feeds were for. In fact Outlook and other mail programs support RSS feeds alongside e-mail. Maybe Google should have integrated Reader into Gmail instead of dropping support for it.

ianwalter 5y ago

I'm trying to switch my newsletters over to Feedbin but it's a slow process.

moltar 5y ago

I use Kill The Newsletter to sub via RSS to all newsletters I want to read.

aethertron 5y ago

My inbox a good place for me to learn about the existence of a new issue of something, but a poor place to actually read said issues, to keep track of what I've read, and manage a 'library'. I want e-reader-like features: - save my place - highlighting - annotations Should these features be added to Gmail? I trow not. Better to have these newsletter issues converted to some appropriate format and sent to my library, along with my ebooks and saved web pages.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

vcavallo 5y ago

I set up a newsletters email folder with automatic filtering. When I feel like reading newsletters, I go there. Otherwise, I don’t see them. Sort of the same behavior loop of opening up my RSS feed (which, incidentally, is how I’m seeing this post).

deergomoo 5y ago

I don't mind, although I don't get a lot of email. Maybe like 10 a day, and most of that is just receipts/invoices/confirmations which can be immediately archived. So in fact my inbox is usually about 90% newsletters that I haven't read yet.

andybak 5y ago
So - you don't use email for communication with actual people? Do you mind me asking roughly how old you are? I would like to test my theory that email is generational and it's only the over-(insert number here) that still use it as it was originally intended.
- oskarc 5y ago
  I am not the author of the comment, but I am 19 and only communication that I am doing through mail is related with support/feedback/employment. Also after I got a job as intern webdev (I don't even like it), we've been communicating via Slack. Also I saw that friends of mine have Discord/MS Teams/Telegram(!) as main communication service in companies. So, I am also getting a few mails per day, and most of them are invoices, notifications that I don't need to see immediately, newsletters, etc.
- deergomoo 5y ago
  > So - you don't use email for communication with actual people? Nope! I may be cheating somewhat as I'm not counting work communication here, which does involve a decent amount of email, but I only access that inbox through a web browser so I can easily close the tab and be done for the day. I'm also not getting any newsletters to my work inbox. > Do you mind me asking roughly how old you are? I would like to test my theory that email is generational and it's only the over-(insert number here) that still use it as it was originally intended I'm 28. All my communication is via messaging apps (iMessage for family as we all have iPhones; WhatsApp for almost everyone else), so I suspect your theory is probably right!
  - andybak 5y ago
    Follow up question. I find the problem with messaging services is that there's no central inbox and no decent handling of "unread". If I get an instant message from someone that I can't (or choose not to) respond to immediately, then the chances are very high that I'll forget to respond. But with email it stays in my inbox and I can easily set it back to "unread" for extra emphasis. I find I'm terrible at keeping up with messaging unless it's synchronous chatting. Anything asynchronous goes out the window. I suppose I just find everything else lacking in features that I've come to depend on in email. I just don't understand how everyone else manages.

andymitchell 5y ago

My Gmail plugin is coming from the same pain (I subscribed to a ton of great newsletters, but they clutter everything human): https://www.getbreef.com https://www.getbreef.com . It's just my side project, and it's in beta - let me know if you'd like to try it. It gives desktop Gmail an RSS-esque topic view of your inbox, and lets you infinite scroll through emails like you would Twitter or Insta.

jasode 5y ago

Probably multiple forces affect sending newsletters to email inbox: - Client-side motivation : some users want to use their email as the "universal inbox". E.g. They may also send TODOs/reminders by sending emails to themselves instead of a separate app for alarms. Newsletters are just another stream of info that should conveniently go into their universal inbox. - Publisher-side motivation: email addresses are valuable because it's important to "build an audience" outside of centralized platforms like Patreon/Youtube/TikTok. RSS doesn't solve the same problem because that's a "pull" mechanism instead of "push" like email. If the above factors are unimportant to a particular person, then yes, the email inbox is a suboptimal communications channel for newsletters.

Sharlin 5y ago
The absolutely most important reason: everyone has an email address. It’s not just the least common denominator, it’s pretty much the only common denominator. RSS practically does not exist outside the tech scene.
- rhn_mk1 5y ago
  Everyone having an email address is a false assumption, or a bad generalization. There are people among us without one, and owning a phone number instead. I'm not sure along which lines the divide falls though. Younger? Less western? Less businessy? It's still possible that the people who would be interested in a newsletter are the same people who have email addresses.
  - Sharlin 5y ago
    I used the word "everyone" rhetorically, of course. The point is, to a first (and second) approximation everybody uses email and nobody uses RSS.
  - easrng 5y ago
    If you have a phone number, you probably have an email through a SMS/MMS gateway.

jp57 5y ago

I use NetNewsWire (Mac, IOS) to subscribe to substacks RSS feeds. Free posts appear right in the app. You have to click through to read subscriber-only posts in the browser. It has several options for syncing your feeds' state between devices. (iCloud, Feedly, etc)

SamWhited 5y ago

As others have said, I use an RSS reader for this sort of thing. Many newsletters provide a blog/syndicated version anyways which I can subscribe to, and there are bridges available. That being said, I don't have a bridge so for ones that are only available by email I setup filters and put them into folders unless I want to read them every single week (in which case I do think the inbox it the best place). If you do decide to go the RSS route, I use https://www.inoreader.com https://www.inoreader.com and haven't found a better web-based/has a phone app one yet. The others I tried were all full of nonsense AI that kept bugging me, or weird javascripty fancy UIs that broke, or just didn't let me read inline (you had to click through to pages). Other recommendations welcome though.

mvexel 5y ago

Filter by presence of header List-Id takes care of bypassing your inbox for most any list-like email.

corobo 5y ago

It is not you, RSS etc etc like the other comments Feedly and Unread (iOS app) are my poison of choice. Lovely interface on top of a reliable service. Unread also does an instapaper-like parse of the article if you subscribe to a feed that does that daft excerpt only thing :)

hsn915 5y ago

Newsletters use email because it's much more likely to stay operational for longer into the future than any other random web service. It's a source of power. If they don't have your email, then they can't contact you in the future if the platform decides to kick them out.

deregulateMed 5y ago

I'm on the other side of the issue. I have 10000 subscribers with a 0.6% Spam rate. That's technically high, despite me getting all emails voluntarily and not even offering a freebie for signing up. Anyway, can't use Facebook/IG/Reddit/Twitter because of the algorithm. Can't email more than 4 times a year due to spam filters. I still pay hundreds of dollars a year to reach people via email octopus and Amazon.... And it still goes to Gmail spam. This is not the internet I grew up with.

0_____0 5y ago
How is it that you're limited to 4x/year whereas many vendors will happily send me marketing email once a week without issue?
- deregulateMed 5y ago
  If you are bombarded with emails, you either unsubscribe or you let them keep coming. Even if lots of people mark as spam, the number of emails not marked as spam greatly outnumber the spam emails. It seems you can either email occasionally or email weekly. The current system is not set up for monthly emails. My content takes weeks to produce. I'm also a bit skeptical that Gmail treats all domains equal. I imagine HBO/Joann Fabrics/etc... has a deal to spam people, where I do not.
- Ensorceled 5y ago
  Not enough people are marking those as spam ...
- prawn 5y ago
  I get emails through to my GSuite inbox from senders that I've marked as spam repeatedly (10+ times). Same from email. Same subject style and format. And they still get through. Makes me really curious about what they're doing to get through. 90% of the spam that escapes my spam folder is web design pitches from email addresses of the format firstnamelastname123@gmail.com - always GMail...
jfengel 5y ago
I'm curious: how do you learn your spam rate?

tern 5y ago

I recently switched to https://www.hey.com/ https://www.hey.com/ for email, which provides a dedicated page for reading newsletters. I didn't like it at first, but after comparing in depth with Gmail and Superhuman I prefer the workflow. Having separate interfaces for communications, feeds, and automated emails has been great.

theoblank 5y ago
I use HEY for all my personal email now too. I definitely believe it's a step in the right direction.

m-p-3 5y ago

I use an email address provided by Inoreader to get all my newsletters along my RSS feeds. Unfortunately some newsletters are tied to my user account and my main email address for some services, so I had to do an email forward rule in Gmail for those for them to skip my inbox.

sandworm101 5y ago

Ill take a crowded inbox over the previous system: a crowded post box. At least i can throw spam blockers and other tools at the problem. Setting roadblocks to catch postal trucks is a federal offence.

pwinnski 5y ago

It's clearly not just you, based on the other comments, but I use my RSS Reader (InoReader) for quicker bits of reading/scanning/art/comics, so email works just right for me. I have filters for each newsletter, so I don't actually think of it much as "email," but as "let me go check and see which newsletters have new issues to read today now that I have time for newsletter reading." Checking just now, there are 18 individual titles under my "Lists" heading in Fastmail, of which six are bold, indicating something new to read. For me, sending those newsletters to RSS would be a step backward, and having to remember to go visit the websites in question would be two steps backward, so I guess I'm the target market for the status quo!

Ensorceled 5y ago

I get multiple newsletters in my inbox; some are daily, some weekly, some randomly. It takes no time at all to scan them, decide if there is anything useful and then delete, flag to be read or "save to pocket". I read the more interesting newsletters or linked articles at my leisure. Works perfect for me.

tpoacher 5y ago

My problem is not newsletters. I happily send those to a Newsletters folder via a filter. My problem is companies sending important non-newsletter stuff in a way that is virtually indistinguishable from a filter point of view to their newsletter emails.

hiidrew 5y ago

One of the features I liked about Hey but as a broke graduate student couldn't justify that cost. Easy to replicate in Gmail though: create a folder/label, filter to skip the inbox, mark as read, and go into the desired folder. Boom you have a newsfeed specific to your newsletters.

ahmd 5y ago

email newsletter are to me just a “blog posts with email notification”, they are difficult to filter, difficult to search and makes the inbox filled with less important stuff, i think there is a gap in the market for some sort of a solution, maybe a service that sends all your newsletters to “Notion” so you can search them ;) what do you think?

nkotov 5y ago

I just stopped reading email newsletter in general. Currently sitting at 307 emails unread in the newsletters folder. I have a tab folder that I launch every morning when I drink my coffee and prep for the day. It contains HN, local news, tech news, several subreddits, and YC related stuff. I wish there was a digestible way to gather my top 20 so that I don't manually go through all that information while drinking my coffee in the morning.

CarelessExpert 5y ago
> I wish there was a digestible way to gather my top 20 so that I don't manually go through all that information while drinking my coffee in the morning. You know, it's likely most if not all of that can be fed into an RSS reader...

dash2 5y ago

I like having newsletters in my inbox. It gives me something nice to read among all the spam, work and other junk.

ssss11 5y ago

The marketers believe its best place for their newsletters so you gotta convince them why we’ll bother looking somewhere else.

hansy 5y ago

I can give you some data from my own newsletter [1]. Newsletter supports both RSS and Pocket as alternative sources for newsletter issues. ~200 subscribers ~6% accessed their RSS URL within the last week <1% authenticated with Pocket [1] https://funnies.page https://funnies.page

crazygringo 5y ago

I need everything to go to my inbox, including newsletters. It's the only place I'm guaranteed to look besides SMS and my calendar. Then I just process them together with everything else -- take a quick glance at headlines, archive if nothing interesting, keep it in my inbox if I want to read it sometime today, label it if it seems long and I want to keep it for later reading at leisure. The last thing I want is yet another delivery mechanism I have to check. If you have a problem with e-mail overload, it's not going to be solved by adding another information source. It's going to be solved by tackling it head-on in your e-mail, and there are lots of methods.

long11l 5y ago

I just don't read them, they are.AAL is pointless

coffeefirst 5y ago

Not at all. Any other medium would be a blog with RSS. I set my email up to automatically snooze all newsletters to 8am the next day. Every morning I have a bundle. I read most of it, skip some, and then I'm done for the day. The signal to noise ratio is pretty good, and more importantly its finite. I honestly can't imagine going back to scrolling newsfeeds or refreshing sites throughout the day.

andreyk 5y ago

I like it - since I do inbox zero, it makes it easy to see them without going to another app.

CarelessExpert 5y ago

I'm a selfhosting nerd so I use Huginn to scrape the newsletters from my email and turn them into RSS feeds that I consume by converting them into an e-newspaper with Calibre. I also use ttrss's feature to republish articles via an RSS feed, plus Wallabag and it's RSS, to get bundles of long form content onto my Kindle. My Saturday morning ritual is then to open Calibre and download the last week's worth of Matt Levine newsletters to my Kindle, which I then enjoy on my porch with a coffee.

daxaxelrod 5y ago
I dont know why but this reminds me of the classic HN counter argument to Dropbox. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 Maybe there's a webapp here...
- CarelessExpert 5y ago
  Oh 100%. What I'm doing is not for the feint of heart. For me it's as much for the joy of the project, though I do really like the power and customizability of the stack I've put together. I'm also a privacy wonk and I like having full control over my data, not to mention the content I'm consuming. But yeah, I won't claim this is for everyone. But for those interested in a DIY project it's working great for me!
  - daxaxelrod 5y ago
    Love it, more power to ya :)
kazinator 5y ago
OK, but suppose someone were to scrape newsletters from their e-mail and turn them into RSS feeds, just like you do. But then, suppose they just behave like a typical RSS user and read these with a feed reader. A stereotypical RSS feed reader which implements an inbox-like paradigm, where you see feeds as folders, which show a count like (3) of new unread items. What would be the point? (What you're doing makes sense to you because of the additional steps that are enabled, like conversion into e-newspaper and whatnot. In principle, at least, a mail client could do the same thing, without requiring round trip out to RSS.)

cinntaile 5y ago

I have a mail address specifically for news letters I subscribe to, so it's like a physical mailbox with my subscription magazines dropping in every now and then. If the newsletter is worth reading, I don't mind reading it in my inbox. The problem is that most newsletters are a waste of energy and then the inbox becomes a place where the newsletters go to die. Once I notice this pattern I unsubscribe from those newsletters. This leaves me with an inbox with mostly high quality newsletters.

SllX 5y ago

Yes, which is why I have a rule setup to forward to Instapaper.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

benfrancom 5y ago

I've found that most places offer the same content in an RSS feed as their newsletter. I prefer the terminal newsboat RSS reader running in Docker. : https://newsboat.org/ https://newsboat.org/ https://github.com/newsboat/newsboat https://github.com/newsboat/newsboat ...and lynx is also in the container for browsing.

gherkinnn 5y ago

I use Hey as my main email client and make good use of its feed category, a dedicated inbox for newsletters. I wish it would offer more "reader" options, but other than that it works. Works.

igammarays 5y ago

No, I prefer my newsletters to my inbox over anywhere else. I have an inbox zero workflow, so if I don't have time for in-depth item right away, I print it or save a PDF to my iPad reading list for later review.

TameAntelope 5y ago

Feedly has a newsletter feature that I use for a few of my subscriptions, but yeah generally I agree. Inbox/Email is for people reaching out to me directly, not for general Internet things.

ayush--s 5y ago

I was in the same boat - until I jumped over to RSS feeds using a selfhosted Miniflux instance.

dsr_ 5y ago

Different media have different affordances and cultures. I happen to think: email is for discussion with people, and occasionally for notifications/reminders chat systems are for talking in near-realtime Usenet is for long slow public conversations forums are like Usenet but worse for reading RSS is for reading periodic content - comics, newspaper articles, magazine articles, columns, blogs Newsletters are clearly periodic content, so RSS is the way.

GrinningFool 5y ago

Somewhat OT - but are there any good technical newsletters where the full content is in the actual email?

kureikain 5y ago

I like email as news letter though. It is decentralize. I can read on any platform, anywhere, search going back. flag, move them around in my folder however i want

omegalulw 5y ago
With email you also don't have to check 10 things every day.

hollander 5y ago

Facebook was the place for newsletters for me. I didn't do much on a personal level, but it was an OK place to follow stuff.

notJim 5y ago

I actually like it. I'm in the habit of checking my email regularly, so this allows me to consume the content I subscribe to without needing to build a new habit/ritual. Not saying everyone has to do things my way, just saying why I like it.

jjav 5y ago

Email is the optimal mechanism for any newsletter I care to receive. I get it with no effort (no need to go anywhere else) and it's there in my email reader for whenever I have the time for it.

tpl 5y ago

RSS is great for content like newsletters. Though I must admit with filtering I find an email inbox works great too.

Eugeleo 5y ago

I found that the problem with newsletters is that there are too many too often. I discovered Mailbrew (https://mailbrew.com/ https://mailbrew.com/) a while back and it solved this problem for me — together with “newsletterifying” a few of other content channels, like Twitter and HN.