Personally email new signups or not?

I suggest you do it manually. They aren't much, are they?

I had this same problem and can make recommendations on a tool to automate this if you are looking to automate.

But I personally will do it manually until it there is need to scale.

I prefer personal, but it highly depends on the volume. You won't email to 1000 users manually. :)

this is something i do almost always... in fact, i try to never miss an opportunity:

https://www.indiehackers.com/post/dont-miss-an-opportunity-to-deeply-engage-with-new-email-subscribers-and-community-members-290bdfe4fa

Yes, do it personally, it will help a lot in knowing what exactly the customer needs.

If you haven’t read Paul Graham’s Do Things that Don’t Scale article, I highly recommend it.

These are your first users, you should understand intimately why they signed up and what their problems are. If I were you I would send a manual email along the lines of:

Hi, I’m the founder of Vatfy. I wondered if I’d be able to personally walk you through the product and chat to you about how I can help solve your problems.

Be personal and authentic, people have learned to switch off from generic marketing.

Personally email but not just to thank them. You needs to solicit feedback from them. Ask everyone who will hear you to give you feedback on your product. It’s the most important thing you can do to help grow.

Automate it and offer a free onboarding session. Put in a Calendly link. If they book, you can squeeze them for insights.

In addition to the automated email I sometimes send a personal email afterwards, if I have the headspace to do so. Until now I figured those personal emails get a better response than those others.

Slightly related to this, I have been thinking about abolishing those fancy email templates in favour of plain text emails. The response is better, and throw in some randomized email time and I'm sure most recipients will not be able to tell whether I sent them, or told a computer to do so.