tinyletter, the service i use to send my monthly newsletter, is being discontinued next february. i am currently looking at alternatives.
rn my options are looking like:
- mailchimp (not thrilled about this because they are the ones shutting tinyletter down)
- sendfox (a friend uses this one and it seems cute)
- substack (questionable whether my newsletter fits their guidelines)1
- some other service i don't know about yet (recommendations please!)
alternatively i could retire the newsletter and just post announcements on patreon/cohost like i have been doing already. if you are charmed by letters from trick and would be sad to stop receiving them please let me know, because i feel like i could go either way...
i wanted to post about this here because i'm completely undecided (they JUST announced that theyre shutting tinyletter down), and i don't actually know what kind of updates people prefer to get from me (short posts, long posts, email, etc...) maybe it depends on the person.... if i'm still undecided after getting feedback here i will ask patrons and newsletter subbers directly (the last one i sent was JUST THIS MORNING!!! AGH!!!!!!!!)
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substack's content guidelines say "We don’t permit publications whose primary purpose is to advertise external products or services, drive traffic to third party sites, [etc]" and most of my newsletters just link to whatever new thing i released and have minimal content otherwise. i COULD repost my dev diaries there as a patreon alternative but i think i would rather use cohost for that once they implement tipping/subs... so yeah not sure im a substack kind of guy. maybe it'd be fine though. would love to hear impressions from people who use/follow people on substack.
Was gonna do my own post later this evening but I think now's a good time to drop what alternatives I've seen so far in a few marketing chats I'm in. I haven't tried out these specific services, but here's what I've seen thus far:
MailerLite
Free plan offers 1K subs max and 12K emails a month.
beehiiv
Free plan offers 2.5K subs max and no limit on emails a month. Includes analytics.
Sender
Free plan offers 2.5K subs max and no limit on emails a month. There are automation features and analytics included as well.
ButtonDown
EDIT: Found the pricing page (why was it not there on mobile?). The free plan offers 100 subs max with scheduling. Paid tiers are noticeably cheaper than other services.
Of course, do your own research on each of these options to see if they fit your needs!
