“I can’t leave Substack, the alternatives charge monthly fees!”
For a mid-sized paid newsletter, you will pay:
Ghost Pro: $149–$269/month
Beehiiv: $131–$218/month
Buttondown: $239/month
Mailchimp: $285/month
Substack: $700/month
For a mid-sized paid newsletter, you will pay:
Ghost Pro: $149–$269/month
Beehiiv: $131–$218/month
Buttondown: $239/month
Mailchimp: $285/month
Substack: $700/month
Comments
Moving has been more painful than I'd like to admit which is why I've hemmed and hawed
There's not a lot of space to squeeze in a new competitor between free and whatever's popular.
Thankfully, my $15 WordPress site is able to handle all 9 of subscribers. :D
Ya you need to config your way around Amazon's cloud stuff, but if you are a geek, it's just another adventure
Did I say dirt cheap?
I have an integration from Carrd into it -> https://subscribe.jimcarroll.com
https://sendy.co
Nobody ever -- ever -- needs to email me. It's almost as bad as getting a phone call.
https://buttondown.com/the-rec-center
Ask me how I feel when I've been there a few years.
Hundreds of journalists covered crypto, I can only think of five whose coverage I respect, you are one of them. Everyone else just regurgitated the pitches given by the scammers without any thought.
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Paywalls don't work because they are too intrusive. Too much effort.
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We need a Visa/Mastercard like four corner model: Any user can read content from any publisher
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Newspapers didn't just start getting driven by the agendas of the plutocrats who own them in the past few years.
The reason I got involved in the Web back in 1992 was Rupert Murdoch, a bigoted foreigner boasting he installed the Tory government with his lies.
So, if I read one of your articles, you get a few cents. If I read ten in a month, I have to subscribe
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They also don’t charge transaction fees.
Now I’m super curious what these providers margins are.
if you’re looking for substack alternatives for small, free newsletters, have you checked out beehiiv? free up to 2,500 subscribers.
your payment processor will also takes a cut of transaction fees, but I haven’t included that as a cost in the above breakdown because that’s built in to all of these options.
Next year, I am extending my Mesh/Everything client to be a feed reader. Will support RSS, Activity Pub and AT Protocol plus the Mesh feed interface which allows end-to-end encryption.
But shouldn’t subscriber acquisition cost part of the calculation?
I'm on a cheapass Hetzner box for 7 EUR/mo, but money is all separate
i'm still piggybacking on free jetpack
That would be the fantastic. Go check them out @hitpoints.bsky.social
I'm shocked that emails are still a distribution medium post-2005. It's like seeing someone pay for their groceries with a check.
I haven’t personally used ConvertKit but it seems to handle the basics.
I am remodeling how I consume content, but I HATE newsletters. My email is so swamped with excessive notices from delivery sources, medical appointments, etc that is NOT where I want to do my reading.
I would much rather read a blog!
I don't care if it's sent via email or on a "sleak templated page". I care about the information. Just use the cheaper tool!
There's newsletters I might subscribe to if they had RSS feeds I could plug into a more convenient feed aggregator, but not clear who supports RSS.
Caveat: I don't read email newsletters, but this came up a bit when I had a job that required a deep dive into online monetization.
check out what 404 media did, though: https://www.404media.co/404-media-now-has-a-full-text-rss-feed/
I wish more news sites did that, it's among the reasons I dropped NYT (content too). They really want you to use their app, RSS is very much an afterthought
The media ecosystem was more ripe for algorithmic attention-exploitation and rage-baiting when intentional feed curation became a niche thing.
Personal info-diet mgmt could've been more hip.
The only exception here is for large, free newsletters.