I got tired of paying more every time my email list grew, so I'm building QeakFlow

One cost worth testing with beta users is migration, not just the monthly invoice. For a small business, switching also means preserving consent and suppression status, rebuilding forms and templates, reconnecting the sending domain, and testing the first campaign without disrupting normal work. If QeakFlow can turn that into a predictable checklist or guided import, the flat-price promise gets stronger because buyers can understand both the recurring cost and the cost of getting there. Which part of migration are your early users most worried about?

Solid idea, Andrii. The “price goes up because the list grew” thing is a real trust killer for small businesses, even when the product itself is fine.

BYO SMTP is the interesting part for me. Flat pricing gets attention, but keeping control of sender reputation is what makes this feel different from just another cheaper Mailchimp clone. If you can make that setup simple for non-technical owners, that’s a real wedge.

One thing I’d watch: a lot of people say they “just need newsletters,” then six weeks later ask for segments, automations, and basic analytics. Maybe keep V1 tiny, but be clear what you’re intentionally not building yet so beta users don’t feel bait-and-switched.

I’m building Make it RAIN on a similar instinct, tools for people who don’t need the bloated suite, just a clear path to make money. Can’t drop links here yet, but happy to swap beta notes if useful.

Either way, good landing page move. Flat pricing + ownership of sending is a clean story.

Bring-your-own-SMTP is the feature I'd actually pay for. We got a hard lesson in provider lock-in this week: our transactional sender hit its plan quota mid-campaign and we had to stand up a second provider as failover on short notice just to keep the send moving. If you're already letting people bring their own SMTP, a built-in secondary/failover SMTP slot (auto-switch when the primary bounces a rate-limit error) would be a genuinely differentiated feature, most of the flat-fee competitors I've looked at don't offer that because it complicates their reputation monitoring. Also seconding the question above on transactional vs newsletter-only, since deliverability requirements are pretty different between the two.

I like this. The bill climbing just because your list grew always felt backwards to me. You send to the same kind of people, there are just more of them. Flat pricing fixes that, and it makes their costs easy to predict, which is worth a lot to a small business. Bring your own SMTP is a good call too. The one thing I'd keep an eye on is the customer whose cost to you still grows, so a heavy sender doesn't quietly turn unprofitable while everyone else is fine. Not a reason to add tiers, just worth watching. Are you aiming this at newsletters mainly, or transactional email as well?

the flat-pricing wedge is genuinely good. per-subscriber pricing does feel like getting taxed for succeeding, and people hate it enough to actually switch.

one tension worth thinking about early though: 'bring your own SMTP' and 'built for small businesses, not technical teams' are quietly pulling in opposite directions. BYO SMTP means the user sets up and babysits their own SES or postmark, warms it up, handles SPF/DKIM/DMARC, deals with bounces and complaints. that's exactly the stuff a non-technical small biz owner is running away from when they say they just want to send a newsletter.

so i'd get really clear on which of two people you're for:

• someone semi-technical who already has SES and just resents mailchimp's markup (BYO SMTP is perfect for them)
• a true non-technical small biz (then BYO SMTP is a wall, and you'd need to make the smtp part near-invisible, guided setup or a managed-send option)

both are real businesses, they're just different products. the pricing wedge works for either, but the onboarding and the landing copy look completely different depending which one you pick. right now the post reads like you want the second person while the feature list is built for the first.

Going this narrow is the right call. I sell to the same segment (trades and home services, in Canada) and everything you wrote matches: they don't compare features, they compare 'does this earn me one more job than it costs per month.' The buying trigger is almost never a feature list — it's one specific painful miss they can name. If that holds for German tradespeople too, your best landing copy is probably a story, not a benefits grid. And +1 on ecommerce being a different species — a plumber and a Shopify store share nothing about how they use their inbox.

The pricing frustration is real. Paying more just because the list grew feels like a tax on doing the thing that matters.

BYO SMTP is an interesting wedge too. Control and predictable cost together is clearer than “yet another simpler Mailchimp.”

Main risk I’d watch: “simple email tool” is a crowded shelf. The sharper the buyer (“local businesses who only send monthly newsletters and hate per-subscriber pricing”), the easier this sells.

I built Make it RAIN for creators monetizing products, so I’m biased toward clear ICP early. Flat pricing alone may not be enough without a specific “this is for you” sentence.

If I were beta testing, I’d want to know the exact flat price and what breaks when someone hits 10k subscribers.

This really resonates, I'm building in a totally different category but from the exact same "why am I paying for 40 features to use one" frustration. One thing to watch with flat pricing though: the single huge sender whose volume blows past your flat price while your revenue stays flat, that one case can quietly eat your margin, so a soft cap or a second tier keeps the "predictable price" promise without the downside. Bring-your-own-SMTP is a smart move too, it pushes deliverability cost and sender reputation onto the user, which is exactly how you stay cheap. Who do you picture as the main switcher, someone leaving Mailchimp on price, or someone who never wanted a full suite to begin with?

The predictable-price idea is easy to understand, but “small businesses” can mean very different email habits. Are you looking for your first beta users from one specific group — newsletters, local businesses, or ecommerce stores — or are you deliberately keeping it broad to learn where the frustration is strongest?

I like that you're challenging the pricing model instead of assuming the feature set is the problem.

I'll be interested to see what beta users consistently describe as the reason they switch. That tends to reveal whether the product is really about predictable pricing, sender control, simplicity, or something else entirely.