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This looks really nice. I've been fiddling around building newsletter-adjacent products for a few years, and I've been wanting a simple Substack-alternative* th

This looks really nice. I've been fiddling around building newsletter-adjacent products for a few years, and I've been wanting a simple Substack-alternative* that's good for casual use so that I can recommend it to users. Can I make one request? Please provide single opt-in as an option! v2 invisible Recaptcha is effective for stopping bots, and most of the time people won't even be shown a challenge. Double opt-in confirmation emails only have about a 70% conversion rate in my experience (and that's counting only people who get past Recaptcha), so you lose a big chunk of subscribers. I almost started using Ghost a while ago for my own newsletter, but no single opt-in is just a deal breaker for me. See also https://mailchimp.com/resources/why-single-opt-in-and-an-update-for-our-eu-customers/ https://mailchimp.com/resources/why-single-opt-in-and-an-upd... *Substack _is_ good for casual use, but I have various beefs with them, the main one being that they're trying to build yet another platform instead of being part of an ecosystem.

philip1209 4y ago
Thanks for the note! I just ran a query, and 93% of email signups on Postcard have completed the email confirmation step. A quick look at the incomplete signups shows a lot of obvious fake emails, too. I'm trying to minimize my reliance on big tech, so I want to avoid Google's captcha product. But, hCaptcha and Cloudflare both seem to have more privacy-focused alternatives that I'll check out.
- jacobobryant 4y ago
  Ah, well that's encouraging then! Perhaps you can add that query to an automated report/dashboard in case the conversion rate decreases as the service grows. Thanks for making this in any case!
Tomte 4y ago
> Please provide single opt-in as an option Where it isn't illegal, it is still scummy.
- jacobobryant 4y ago
  Out of the many complaints I've seen leveled at Substack, I honestly can't think of a single time where someone was complaining about their default use of single opt-in. That's not to say you're wrong--however, as best as I can tell, it doesn't seem to be much of an annoyance for most people.

philip1209 4y ago

Thanks for the note! I just ran a query, and 93% of email signups on Postcard have completed the email confirmation step. A quick look at the incomplete signups shows a lot of obvious fake emails, too. I'm trying to minimize my reliance on big tech, so I want to avoid Google's captcha product. But, hCaptcha and Cloudflare both seem to have more privacy-focused alternatives that I'll check out.

jacobobryant 4y ago
Ah, well that's encouraging then! Perhaps you can add that query to an automated report/dashboard in case the conversion rate decreases as the service grows. Thanks for making this in any case!

Tomte 4y ago

> Please provide single opt-in as an option Where it isn't illegal, it is still scummy.

jacobobryant 4y ago
Out of the many complaints I've seen leveled at Substack, I honestly can't think of a single time where someone was complaining about their default use of single opt-in. That's not to say you're wrong--however, as best as I can tell, it doesn't seem to be much of an annoyance for most people.