Affordable newsletter service for managing several newsletters with a large reader-base?
Hi, I have a mobile app with 250k+ registered users. And I would like to start several newsletters, possibly in a couple of languages (app updates/content/onboarding/offboarding, etc.) that the users could sign up for.
I’m looking for advice on the choice of the service provider. The app doesn’t generate too much money, and the pricing of the majority of the popular platforms like MailChimp goes way over my budget.
Is it realistic to hope that there exists a platform that doesn’t charge $2k per month? I don’t really need any fancy analytics or templates, just some basic management logic. I would say something around $100/month is what I would be willing to consider paying. But again, maybe it’s a completely unrealistic assumption?
Alternatively, if you know of a self-hosted easy-to-set-up solution, that would be great as well.
Thanks for any tips!
In terms of "traditional" ESPs, EmailOctopus by @td_evans and @jonathanbull was the least expensive when I last did a price comparison.
You could also try BigMailer by @webbie which my understanding is kind of an admin wrapper around Amazon SES, so you get really inexpensive pricing without less hassle of working directly with Amazon SES.
I have tried EmailOctopus which I like a lot, though they have fewer features that more mature companies like MailChimp. I have not tried BigMailer, I just came across them in my research.
Hope this helps and good luck!
Just did a price check. 250k subs would be $550/mo on EO.
https://emailoctopus.com/pricing
BigMailer would be $250/mo for unlimited emails.
https://www.bigmailer.io/plans-and-pricing
If that's too much, then Amazon SES is $0.10 per 1000 email sends after 62k free sends, so approximately $19 for your first email blast, and thenk $25 for each subsequent blast (assuming you mail your entire list).
By comparison, Mailchimp's highest non-custom plan is 200k sub for $1,190/mo
Thanks for the mention @stevenkkim
BigMailer offers lifetime 20% discounts to indie hackers and 50% off first 3 months to high volume senders with list sizes over 100k.
amazing, thank you, I will definitely have a look!
Thanks for the shoutout! We're amongst the cheapest around and as @stevenkkim mentioned we do offer both an all-in-one solution or an option using Amazon SES called EmailOctopus Connect: https://emailoctopus.com/pricing-connect
These come in at $550/mo or $254/mo respectively, but for Indie Hackers we also offer 30% off for the first 6 months though it's a still a little way away from your ideal $100/mo level .
I do often get asked why email is expensive, particularly as Amazon SES are sending emails at $0.10 per 1000. The issue lies around data storage really – if you send 1 campaign to all your subscribers there will be hundreds of thousands of events generated within seconds. The opens, clicks, bounces. That means we have to be able to scale to handle large volumes and then the largest ongoing cost is in the storage of that data so you can manipulate it and send relevant communications to your subscribers and see engagement over time. Most SaaS's spend about 10% of their revenue on cloud costs, whereas ours is in the 25% region.
And ultimately email still has the highest return on investment for all marketing channels.
N.B There are some very cheap ways of doing email, if you're willing to put in the time and effort. Self hosted tools such as Sendy could be worth a look.
many thanks for the message! It's very insightful. Didn't think about it from the storage perspective, but of course, it makes total sense. In a way this is an argument for me to try to use a self-hosted solution, I'm lucky to have a pile of spare amazon credits laying around, so I could put them to good use. Thanks!
Thanks for the overview!! And for tagging others! :)
@webbie and @td_evans – happy to mention and support other IH projects.
By the way, how did you two respond so quickly to my comment? Are you just hanging out on the IH website all day, or do you have some sort of tool to notify you when you or your product gets mentioned?
IH sends an email notification when someone mentions you if your settings allow for it :-)
Wow, I didn't realize that setting existed. Seems obvious in retrospect. Thanks!!!
Congratulations on building such a large list of customers @mistle, impressive!
The first question I would like to ask is - how often would you want to send your newsletters? Some providers charge based on emails sent and some based on list size, so you need to figure out what you plan to start with and what your future ideal schedule might be. Are you sending any transactional emails now? If the answer is yes, then look for a platform that supports both so you don't pay twice to 2 providers.
Here is a comparison page for email services I put together. It's not focusing on lowest cost solutions but can give you an idea of the features you may need in the near future to help you choose a provider.
Warning: If you haven't engaged your list in a while you would need to verify it before importing into any platform and using or risk a very high bounce rate and account suspension. All email lists have a natural decay rate of around 2-3% per month and you need to stay way below 10% on your campaigns to avoid suspensions.
Disclaimer: I am the owner/operator of BigMailer.io. If you reach out directly I can get you a custom discount to help you get started.
hey, thank you so much for the message. I have not sent my users any emails beyond the standard authentication email generated by Firebase. I'm not sure yet how often I would like to contact them. I definitely want to introduce onboarding emails for new users, and possibly some feedback request for other users. And maybe occasional new features updates.
Thanks for mentioning the email verification process. Didn't think about it.
I will have a look at BigMailer and message you if I think it's a match. Thank you! :)
It's not unrealistic. Together with my small team, we run BirdSend email marketing tool especially for creators.
You mentioned $100/month - for that you can have up to 45k subscribers. Our plan starts at $9/m for 1k subscribers.
Full pricing details here:
https://birdsend.co/pricing
Thanks! I will have a look! :)
I have the cheapest solution for you. It is Sendy.
Self hosted app which can send email via aws. This means you pay one time license for Sendy and you need to pay for aws email service. Also I'm this case you host this app on your own hosting. But this will save you a lot of money.
https://sendy.co/
looks really perfect, thanks!!
I'm afraid having 250k subscribers will always be expensive. But are all 250k active? You could start with everyone who has used the app in the last 3 months and regularly unsubscribe cold subscribers, who haven't opened an email in 3 months. That might keep your list more sane and affordable?
Alternatively, I know there are some great WordPress solutions for newsletters and if you could then connect it to Amazon SES, it might be much cheaper. I can't recommend a WP plugin unfortunately
hey, thanks for the reply. Yeah, so for sure they wouldn't be all active, but it's kind of the order of magnitude I'm looking at right now to set my expectations for the costs, hoping that my user growth continues like this (and preferably sky-rockets with my new app version 🙈).
Thanks for pointing me to SES, I didn't think about it. Maybe I can hook it up with my backend or find some ready-made solution. Will google it. Thanks!
You would need to do custom development on top of SES to send newsletters, it's kind of more suitable for transactional emails like event alerts or daily digests and with just that you are risking a high bounce rate overtime of you don't process (remove) yourself. Segmentation would be off the table, same with template management.
This page outlines the difference between using SES directly and with a platform on top.
If you go the route of self-hosted solution like Sendy keep in mind that the size of your server will influence you rsending speed (in addition to sending limit set by SES). It would probably take 3-4 hours for the smallest instance send to a list of 250k. Double that list size and it could take all day. Time of day can influence your engagement (e.g. open/click rates) and future inbox placement.
Thanks webbie for another very insightful message! :) A lot to consider. In terms of server sizes, I should be fine. But to understand what setup I actually need seems more challenging than I previously thought.
You can always try one option and then switch to the other. I would start with whatever takes the least amount of time to get going with emails. You don't want to spend too much time on setup only to realize you can't find time to create and optimize email campaigns on the schedule you planned.
Happy email marketing!