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Ask HN: Cheap way to run a small newsletter?
For a newsletter of around 1,500 subscribers mailchimp wants £34 a month.
What cheaper / better alternatives are out there for less than 2,000 subscribers? Are we using Amazon SES + an open source tool, what’s good?
- mmarian 2y agoI used emailoctopus for the newsletter I shut down a while back. Worked well, but you need to test it to make sure deliverability is good from the get go.
- capt_chiss 2y agoCame here to say the same thing. EmailOctopus (https://emailoctopus.com/pricing https://emailoctopus.com/pricing) is free for 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails per month. There was a service called tinyletter.com but it is now defunct has MailChimp bought them and shut them down. Super simple UI, and free newsletters, it was awesome.
- tombot 2y agoThank you, Octopus looks good!
- dejaydev 2y agoPlunk will run you $1.5 every time you want to send out an email ($0.001/email * 1500) Plunk is pretty much Amazon SES + an open source tool turned into a product. It's selfhostable but if you prefer software intended to be selfhosted then Sendy might work well for you too. Issue is Sendy costs $70~ upfront. Plunk: https://useplunk.com https://useplunk.com Sendy: https://sendy.co https://sendy.co
- mil10akash 2y agoLooks like usePlunk is solving a problem people had for long
- tombot 2y agoty!
- alsobrsp 2y agoI manage phplist for a small doctor's office. Works well with 4k subscribers. Open Source. https://www.phplist.com https://www.phplist.com
- tombot 2y agoTemplate + contact managing aside, I guess my concern is all of the various pieces that need to be setup and monitored to keep the email bit working
- brudgers 2y ago£34 a month That’s not nothing and can feel like more than it should cost. It’s also less than a one sided Xerox at Kinkos, that is cheap relative to historical newsletter costs and within the budget of any business and most organizations. White listed email servers are what you are paying for. Tools and service are also what you are paying for. A hobby project might not need those, but it is a cost of doing business for a business. £34 a month can and should be passed on to customers. Good luck.
- tombot 2y agoThanks, I don't know what a Kinko's is, but £34 is more than we're paying to run our entire stack and live streaming video infra. It doenst make sense to be paying more to send a newsletter twice a month.
- brudgers 2y agoWhitelists are why it is value for money. Email is more complicated than it appears because the infrastructure is so mature. Statistically, your 1500 emails is spam. I'm not saying it is spam. But every default across the internet is to treat it as spam. I can't tell you that optimizing £34/month is not the best use of your time and energy. Statistically, it isn't.
- twapi 2y agoYou may consider MailerLite. Cheap and reliable. SES + Sendy is pretty cheap but SES production approval is not very easy to get these day, specially for new projects
- tombot 2y agoYea, I'd also read that if you don't send frequently SES then it's not that great.
- brendanrc2 2y agoConvertKit (soon to be Kit) is free for up to 10,000 subscribers. convertkit.com (I work there)
- tombot 2y agook, I'll take a look! Edit: What is Creator Network and why can't the free account opt-out? does not look like we get API access either? so it seems like I have to use your forms which my customers can get recommended other accounts? seems weird honestly
- asicsp 2y agoGumroad is a free option. I run a programming newsletter with about 1000 subscribers.
- tombot 2y agoThanks I'll take a look!
- __rito__ 2y agoWhy is no one mentioning Substack? It's an honest question. To me, in OP's situation, it's the obvious choice. What am I missing?
- avinassh 2y agolast I checked, Substack did not allow writers to set canonical links for their posts.
- com2kid 2y agoThere are competitors out there as well if substack doesn't work for some reason! I understand the desire to own one's own data and all that, but the most popular solutions are often popular for at least one or two good reasons!
- tombot 2y agoYeah good point, not one I had considered tbh. In my head it was a bit like medium, seems like offer a lot these days
- rozenmd 2y agoButtondown.com is really good, with a founder that still cares about the business.
- tombot 2y agoah nice, that one had come up in my searches too. Looks good!
- codegeek 2y agoYou can use https://listmonk.app https://listmonk.app or https://sendy.co https://sendy.co and use a provider lke SES under the hood.
- tombot 2y agoHad not seen listmonk, will take a look!