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Show HN: I made an open source Mailchimp RSS-to-Email alternative

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Re: Show HN: I made an open source Mailchimp RSS-to-Email alternative

#31

Post by davidchua »

RamblingCTO wrote: post #25
davidchua wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've built a similar app before I found out about this. https://newsletters.love If anyone wants to give it a try, please give me your feedback!

it looks a bit unfinished tbh and is pretty slow. HN success hug of death? I built something similar: https://newsletterify.com but is also not really finished. There's a copy cat of my product of which I'm not sharing the link, but I love that there is some competition out there. I love reading newsletters and aggregated information when I have the time, but emails aren't really the medium imho

Thanks for the feedback!

So sorry that you're experiencing slowness. I haven't done any performance test on it as for the past few months its mostly been used by just friends and family.

I hope it is faster now.

Tbh, I'm not sure what else to build on top of it as when I built it, I just wanted a safe and private place to be able to curate newsletters without exposing my main email address and allow friends to view my subscriptions.

What do you think feels needs to be touched up? Is it the UI?

Re: Show HN: I made an open source Mailchimp RSS-to-Email alternative

#32

Post by RamblingCTO »

Beijinger wrote: post #29
RamblingCTO wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, and the prices will change, I just haven't gotten to that part yet. I did a bigger rewrite that I had to do first (moved backend to supabase, introduced pagination everywhere). New pricing will be up asap and will be around $6.99/$69.99 for a lite version (small number of summaries) and $9.99/$9.99 for the regular plan. Will include 7+ days of free trial. That's almost half of the copy cat btw. If anyone's inter…

I don't want to discourage you, but the prices look insane. Especially considering that you compete with competitors that are free. Please be very clear about your USPs and your target audience.

In your view, how do you think I compete with these "free" services? And how can they stay free, if they have to pay 1) their time 2) their compute infrastructure and 3) LLMS and 4) email receiving (that's pretty cost intense btw). And if they don't monetize, how long do you think they'll stick around and get new features all the time?

I really don't get the sentiment on HN that everything should be free, sorry.

Re: Show HN: I made an open source Mailchimp RSS-to-Email alternative

#33

Post by RamblingCTO »

davidchua wrote: post #31
RamblingCTO wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it looks a bit unfinished tbh and is pretty slow. HN success hug of death? I built something similar: https://newsletterify.com but is also not really finished. There's a copy cat of my product of which I'm not sharing the link, but I love that there is some competition out there. I love reading newsletters and aggregated information when I have the time, but emails aren't really the medium imho

Thanks for the feedback! So sorry that you're experiencing slowness. I haven't done any performance test on it as for the past few months its mostly been used by just friends and family. I hope it is faster now. Tbh, I'm not sure what else to build on top of it as when I built it, I just wanted a safe and private place to be able to curate newsletters without exposing my main email address and allow friends to view m…

we're solving the same problem then ;)

for me it definitely is the UI! you could think about adding a UI kit on top of it for a more polished look? and the biggest downturn for me personally is the google login. I wish you good luck with the project mate!

Re: Show HN: I made an open source Mailchimp RSS-to-Email alternative

#34

Post by latexr »

RamblingCTO wrote: post #32
Beijinger wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to discourage you, but the prices look insane. Especially considering that you compete with competitors that are free. Please be very clear about your USPs and your target audience.

In your view, how do you think I compete with these "free" services? And how can they stay free, if they have to pay 1) their time 2) their compute infrastructure and 3) LLMS and 4) email receiving (that's pretty cost intense btw). And if they don't monetize, how long do you think they'll stick around and get new features all the time? I really don't get the sentiment on HN that everything should be free, sorry.

> I really don't get the sentiment on HN that everything should be free, sorry.

That’s not what your parent comment is arguing. The point is that it’s hard to sustain a business against competitors which offer the same thing for free, and the higher your price point the harder it is.

Maybe you aren’t offering the same thing or your service is so much better that it is worth the price, but that’s a different argument.

> And how can they stay free (…), how long do you think they'll stick around and get new features all the time?

I use one of this other services. It is open-source and I don’t know what their costs are, but it’s been working for me for years. I have zero need for more features from them, I’m happy with the simplicity. That I know of they don’t have LLM costs because they don’t use LLMs, and to me that is a plus. If your service is using LLMs, that honestly makes me less interested in it.

Re: Show HN: I made an open source Mailchimp RSS-to-Email alternative

#35

Post by jfil »

santa_boy wrote: post #16

Perhaps a bit OT, but will really appreciate inputs on this. There have been an influx of such tools, and understandably so, related to email lists. Based on various comments, I feel that the biggest item driving success around email is around email deliverability. What are the the skills and secret sauce of companies that claim to do very reliable email deliverability, and I'm failing to understand why isn't it as s…

I wrote about a few of the secret sauce tricks here: https://jacobfilipp.com/blocklistings/

It's very challenging to maintain good mailer reputation when you let "the public" use your IP addresses (easier to deal with a dozen enterprise mailers than a million mom-and-pop shops). Some vendors use psychological nudges ("reminder: our contract forbids web-scraped and purchased lists"). Some use technical means to block problematic email addresses. Some buy/scrape lists on the down-low and use them to check if customers are uploading scraped lists...

Re: Show HN: I made an open source Mailchimp RSS-to-Email alternative

#36

Post by RamblingCTO »

latexr wrote: post #34
RamblingCTO wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your view, how do you think I compete with these "free" services? And how can they stay free, if they have to pay 1) their time 2) their compute infrastructure and 3) LLMS and 4) email receiving (that's pretty cost intense btw). And if they don't monetize, how long do you think they'll stick around and get new features all the time? I really don't get the sentiment on HN that everything should be free, sorry.

> I really don't get the sentiment on HN that everything should be free, sorry. That’s not what your parent comment is arguing. The point is that it’s hard to sustain a business against competitors which offer the same thing for free, and the higher your price point the harder it is. Maybe you aren’t offering the same thing or your service is so much better that it is worth the price, but that’s a different argument.…

That's fine, I'd say that the parent comment didn't check out the website before arguing over the price. I'd say it's an entirely different service. Great that whatever solution you use works for you, love that. I wanted something more, so I built my solution. I don't think I'll ever get rich, but the cost structure is prohibitive just for myself.

Re: Show HN: I made an open source Mailchimp RSS-to-Email alternative

#37

Post by elliotkillick »

jfil wrote: post #35
santa_boy wrote: post #16

Perhaps a bit OT, but will really appreciate inputs on this. There have been an influx of such tools, and understandably so, related to email lists. Based on various comments, I feel that the biggest item driving success around email is around email deliverability. What are the the skills and secret sauce of companies that claim to do very reliable email deliverability, and I'm failing to understand why isn't it as s…

I wrote about a few of the secret sauce tricks here: https://jacobfilipp.com/blocklistings/ It's very challenging to maintain good mailer reputation when you let "the public" use your IP addresses (easier to deal with a dozen enterprise mailers than a million mom-and-pop shops). Some vendors use psychological nudges ("reminder: our contract forbids web-scraped and purchased lists"). Some use technical means to block…

How did you justify paying $6,000/year for a dedicated IP address? SES will provide you with the same thing for $25/month (https://aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing/#Amazon_SES_Pricing). I noticed your statistics didn't include SES. To me, mystery surrounding reliable email deliverability is primarily a tactic some vendors use to entice non-technical people into relying on their proprietary email marketing solution.

Re: Show HN: I made an open source Mailchimp RSS-to-Email alternative

#38

Post by jfil »

elliotkillick wrote: post #37
jfil wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote about a few of the secret sauce tricks here: https://jacobfilipp.com/blocklistings/ It's very challenging to maintain good mailer reputation when you let "the public" use your IP addresses (easier to deal with a dozen enterprise mailers than a million mom-and-pop shops). Some vendors use psychological nudges ("reminder: our contract forbids web-scraped and purchased lists"). Some use technical means to block…

How did you justify paying $6,000/year for a dedicated IP address? SES will provide you with the same thing for $25/month ( https://aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing/#Amazon_SES_Pricing ). I noticed your statistics didn't include SES. To me, mystery surrounding reliable email deliverability is primarily a tactic some vendors use to entice non-technical people into relying on their proprietary email marketing solution.

The reason we are paying $6k/year for something that normally costa $20 is that we've been with this Marketing Automation provider fir many years, and a lot of our internal training/documentation/integrations are tailored to them. The $6k price tag is not a big enough fraction of our contract to justify switching. And, importantly, all of the other enterpriae-scale marketing automation vendors play this exact same game (the main competitor is owned by Oracle...). We're getting screwed, but I chose to lose this battle in order to reach my greater objectives :-)

The reasons why the stats don't include SES is because the target audience for this article is fairly narrow: it is people at orgs that pay for "Marketing Automation" software. That software has capabilities beyond just email sending, and is used for marketing (hence different deliverability challengea than those at SES, which has a broad customer base and can be used for transactional/alerting emails)

Yes, "deliverability" is often used as something vendors use to spook people. It only matters at scale (like >10,000 people per mailing). And many vendors dont actually know what theyre doing.

I'll be glad to answer more questions on this thread or through email (its in my profile)

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