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What do you mean “you own your newsletter”? Your newsletter is owned by a massive corporate platform such as Mailchipm, which will ban you for wrongthink/wrong

by tomp 4y ago

What do you mean “you own your newsletter”? Your newsletter is owned by a massive corporate platform such as Mailchipm, which will ban you for wrongthink/wrongspeak just like other massive corporate platforms like Facebook. Just the first news story I found: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1017221 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1017221 - keep in mind that “antivaxxer” doesn’t mean what it used to mean but could simply mean you’re pointing out that vaccines aren’t 100% safe or 100% effective which is absolutely true but was considered fake news by mainstream propaganda a year or so ago. Besides the point but I expect I’ll get some replies so just noting preemptively.

lrae 4y ago
Then you just move to another ESP / newsletter service with your mailing list? Or even run it yourself with something like listmonk.
thematrixturtle 4y ago
You're conflating the medium (newsletter) with its distribution mechanism (mass mailing). If you have the content and the destination addresses, it's trivial to switch to another provider.
- tomp 4y ago
  Other providers can still ban you. Switching providers sometimes requires all existing subscribers to “opt in” again. Regardless you’re still owned by a platform. Gmail ain’t gonna let you deliver 1000s of emails yourself.
  - klelatti 4y ago
    > You're still owned by a platform. There is a clear difference between lock in to a single provider and their commercial interests and strategy and the possibility that your content might fall foul of a number of providers. For many email is a much less risky option than alternatives. Do you have a better option?
  - kylecordes 4y ago
    Others can ban you, but if the first band was bogus, the others probably won't ban you. Others could require everyone opt in again, but most of the email providers don't require this. People move their list to another provider all the time; very starkly different from a bunch of followers on a social platform.
mooreds 4y ago
Sure, you might get kicked off a newsletter provider platform. It's a risk. But you have far far more options to take your subscriber list and go to a different provider (substack, tinyletter) or even build your own solution using something like mailgun or AWS SES. (Yes, that latter option would be quite a bit of work, but if you had, say, 20k email subscribers, it might be worth it.) If you get kicked off twitter or facebook or even a place like HN or Lobste.rs, you have exactly zero ability to export the contact info of people who knew you and want to continue to hear from you.
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  It took me about four hours to build an SES based mailing system. With dynamodb, lambda and the API gateway it is almost trivial. Put docker in the mix and it’s more like going to the moon.
  - mooreds 4y ago
    That's great first hand experience, thanks for sharing. Personally I'd probably look at an open source package, but my biggest worries about building my own emailer would be: * making sure I followed the best practices (DMARC, DKIM, etc). * building IP reputation. Not sure how SES does with deliverability, but I know that can be an issue. * email clients rendering of my newsletter. This could by using text only, I suppose. That might work depending on your audience. Again, though, at least you have the option of building your own solution when you have a newsletter.
    - PaulHoule 4y ago
      It’s not a technical problem. The difference between you and Amazon is that Amazon can deal with Gmail by picking up the phone. You aren’t even going to get as far as ‘talk to the hand’. You can do all the things like DKIM right and still go straight to spam. If you’re a real DIY fanatic you’ll run your mail server at home or some other IP address which is doomed from the viewpoint of deliverability and be too stubborn to change it. The SES/Dynamo/Lambda system is perfectly balanced for email lists that generate a huge amount of traffic for short bursts but still need to handles bounces and subscribe/unsubscribe requests whenever they come in, even if you don’t feel like getting around to rebooting the server stuffed under your bed. If you try to do it on a conventional server you need to pay for a lot more server if you don’t want it to get overloaded at peak load.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
devd00d 4y ago
I don't use Mailchimp and never will. I use sendy.co with amazon and on another system I built my own mailer using Mailgun. The main thing is to ensure you have an opted-in mailing list. If you spam randoms, all of these platforms will ban you.

by tomp 4y ago

lrae 4y ago

Then you just move to another ESP / newsletter service with your mailing list? Or even run it yourself with something like listmonk.

thematrixturtle 4y ago

You're conflating the medium (newsletter) with its distribution mechanism (mass mailing). If you have the content and the destination addresses, it's trivial to switch to another provider.

tomp 4y ago
Other providers can still ban you. Switching providers sometimes requires all existing subscribers to “opt in” again. Regardless you’re still owned by a platform. Gmail ain’t gonna let you deliver 1000s of emails yourself.
- klelatti 4y ago
  > You're still owned by a platform. There is a clear difference between lock in to a single provider and their commercial interests and strategy and the possibility that your content might fall foul of a number of providers. For many email is a much less risky option than alternatives. Do you have a better option?
- kylecordes 4y ago
  Others can ban you, but if the first band was bogus, the others probably won't ban you. Others could require everyone opt in again, but most of the email providers don't require this. People move their list to another provider all the time; very starkly different from a bunch of followers on a social platform.

mooreds 4y ago

Sure, you might get kicked off a newsletter provider platform. It's a risk. But you have far far more options to take your subscriber list and go to a different provider (substack, tinyletter) or even build your own solution using something like mailgun or AWS SES. (Yes, that latter option would be quite a bit of work, but if you had, say, 20k email subscribers, it might be worth it.) If you get kicked off twitter or facebook or even a place like HN or Lobste.rs, you have exactly zero ability to export the contact info of people who knew you and want to continue to hear from you.

PaulHoule 4y ago
It took me about four hours to build an SES based mailing system. With dynamodb, lambda and the API gateway it is almost trivial. Put docker in the mix and it’s more like going to the moon.
- mooreds 4y ago
  That's great first hand experience, thanks for sharing. Personally I'd probably look at an open source package, but my biggest worries about building my own emailer would be: * making sure I followed the best practices (DMARC, DKIM, etc). * building IP reputation. Not sure how SES does with deliverability, but I know that can be an issue. * email clients rendering of my newsletter. This could by using text only, I suppose. That might work depending on your audience. Again, though, at least you have the option of building your own solution when you have a newsletter.
  - PaulHoule 4y ago
    It’s not a technical problem. The difference between you and Amazon is that Amazon can deal with Gmail by picking up the phone. You aren’t even going to get as far as ‘talk to the hand’. You can do all the things like DKIM right and still go straight to spam. If you’re a real DIY fanatic you’ll run your mail server at home or some other IP address which is doomed from the viewpoint of deliverability and be too stubborn to change it. The SES/Dynamo/Lambda system is perfectly balanced for email lists that generate a huge amount of traffic for short bursts but still need to handles bounces and subscribe/unsubscribe requests whenever they come in, even if you don’t feel like getting around to rebooting the server stuffed under your bed. If you try to do it on a conventional server you need to pay for a lot more server if you don’t want it to get overloaded at peak load.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

devd00d 4y ago

I don't use Mailchimp and never will. I use sendy.co with amazon and on another system I built my own mailer using Mailgun. The main thing is to ensure you have an opted-in mailing list. If you spam randoms, all of these platforms will ban you.