How Carlo is growing Plunk

Jakob here 🖐

In my newsletter Fake Mayo I share weekly stories (interviews) of how founders got their first customers.

This story is about Carlo D’Agnolo who is working on Plunk - and open-source email platform.

Product Hunt launch in March 2023
First 100 users within a few months
Hosting 3.3k projects
Have sent out +2.8m emails

Carlo D’Agnolo, a 27-year-old Belgian, is part of the team behind Plunk, an open-source email platform.

Plunk is a simple and affordable SaaS email tool. Unlike traditional email services, it charges per email sent, making it accessible for small businesses. With no subscriptions, users pay $0.005 per email after the first 3,000 free ones.

A major boost for Plunk came when founder Dries Augustyns announced its free, self-hosted option on X, which went viral and drew significant attention. The open-source community responded with enthusiasm, leading to 1.7k stars on GitHub and a surge in traffic. Plunk’s visibility skyrocketed.

Carlo and Dries have tried various marketing tactics. Some, like adding Plunk’s branding to email footers and creating a glossary for SEO, didn’t have much impact. However, word of mouth and SEO have been crucial drivers of growth. Dries’ engagement on Discord fosters a community feel, and Carlo’s well-researched SEO content has doubled Plunk’s user base in a few months.

Though the email space is crowded, Plunk is profitable and hosts over 3,300 projects.

Read the full story
https://www.fakemayo.com/p/carlo-growing-plunk-opensource-email-platform

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