“I can’t leave Substack, the alternatives charge monthly fees!”
For a mid-sized paid newsletter, you will pay:
Ghost Pro: $149–$269/month
Beehiiv: $131–$218/month
Buttondown: $239/month
Mailchimp: $285/month
Substack: $700/month
(this is based on assumptions of 20,000 members, 7% paid at $5/mo. twiddle the math as you see fit)
Cheapest option is self-hosting, though of course there is added time cost and a technical barrier to entry. I pay $100–$150/mo to self-host Ghost with a bit over 25,000 subscribers.
For free newsletters, Beehiiv is free for up to 2,500 subscribers. ConvertKit is free up to 10,000.
Adding to this thread because a bunch of people are asking: newsletters are expensive to run because of mailsending, not because of hosting costs. ~70% of my cost is for bulk email. A plain old static blog can be hosted for a couple bucks a month.
@molly0xfff wouldnt self hosting email bé cheaper?
@usul bulk email sending is a nightmare i would wish upon no one. sending is easy, delivering is hard.
@molly0xfff @usul from a tech stack perspective, distribution sure would be a lot easier if authenticated RSS was a thing (besides clear text feed tokens). Any other solutions on the horizon?
@kenny113 Does RSS with simple username:password via .htaccess work?