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1. Embed this notice
   Molly White (molly0xfff@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 02:51:32 JST Molly White

   “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

   #substack

   • Embed this notice
     Molly White (molly0xfff@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 02:52:17 JST Molly White

     in reply to

     (this is based on assumptions of 20,000 members, 7% paid at $5/mo. twiddle the math as you see fit)

   • Embed this notice
     Molly White (molly0xfff@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 03:19:14 JST Molly White

     in reply to

     • Matthew Reinbold

     @matthew Beehiiv is free for up to 2,500 subscribers. ConvertKit is free up to 10,000.

   • Embed this notice
     Matthew Reinbold (matthew@opinuendo.com)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 03:19:25 JST Matthew Reinbold

     in reply to

     @molly0xfff All of this is true, but I'd guess that most of those making that complaint have a small enough number of subscribers that they're "free" on the substack plan. To move from $0 to even a $50/month Ghost Pro entry level plan for the same number of users is a prohibitive jump in out-of-pocket costs.

   • Embed this notice
     Molly White (molly0xfff@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 03:19:51 JST Molly White

     in reply to

     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.

   • Embed this notice
     Molly White (molly0xfff@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 03:20:07 JST Molly White

     in reply to

     For free newsletters, Beehiiv is free for up to 2,500 subscribers. ConvertKit is free up to 10,000.

     Adrianna Tan repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Seth :rebel: :fist_raised: ⁂ (seth@socl.bz)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 03:26:39 JST Seth :rebel: :fist_raised: ⁂

     in reply to

     @molly0xfff It's like a Drug.

   • Embed this notice
     crazyeddie (crazyeddie@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 03:29:12 JST crazyeddie

     in reply to

     @molly0xfff You're a software engineer. Have you considered ways you could help people move into some sort of self/cloud hosting?

     Maybe authors could join pools that people buy into and can read a certain number of articles. Maybe you have teams of editors that compile articles for people to read (like the algorithms do today sort of) and they could buy into that and they could buy from the authors.

     Cloud costs scale. Traffic can be distributed. Hosting is just technically heavy.

   • Embed this notice
     Molly White (molly0xfff@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 03:29:12 JST Molly White

     in reply to

     • crazyeddie

     @crazyeddie helping people self-host at some point just becomes a hosting business, which all of these services provide for (with the exception of Substack) reasonable fees

   • Embed this notice
     Molly White (molly0xfff@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 03:32:55 JST Molly White

     in reply to

     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.

   • Embed this notice
     Eleventy 🎈 v3.0.0 (eleventy@fosstodon.org)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 04:05:23 JST Eleventy 🎈 v3.0.0

     in reply to

     @molly0xfff a static blog, you say

   • Embed this notice
     Molly White (molly0xfff@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 04:05:23 JST Molly White

     in reply to

     • Eleventy 🎈 v3.0.0

     @eleventy ❤️

   • Embed this notice
     Molly White (molly0xfff@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 04:06:05 JST Molly White

     in reply to

     • Ludovic :Firefox: :FreeBSD:

     @usul bulk email sending is a nightmare i would wish upon no one. sending is easy, delivering is hard.

   • Embed this notice
     Ludovic :Firefox: :FreeBSD: (usul@piaille.fr)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 04:06:07 JST Ludovic :Firefox: :FreeBSD:

     in reply to

     @molly0xfff wouldnt self hosting email bé cheaper?

   • Embed this notice
     Molly White (molly0xfff@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 04:09:31 JST Molly White

     in reply to

     • notplants

     @notplants Mailgun, which is what Ghost requires. I hope at some point they’ll add connectors for other providers.

   • Embed this notice
     notplants (notplants@sunbeam.city)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 04:09:32 JST notplants

     in reply to

     @molly0xfff when you say you self-host ghost and 70% of your cost is for bulk email, do you mean that you use another paid external service for e-mail sending? and if so, id be curious which one

     ty for these stats, this is very interesting

     personally, im not at all up for the personal task of trying to self-host an email server and stay out of spam folders, so curious what you are using for bulk email sending.

   • Embed this notice
     Molly White (molly0xfff@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 04:09:41 JST Molly White

     in reply to

     • aeva

     @aeva nope, i don’t use any tracking

   • Embed this notice
     aeva (aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 04:09:42 JST aeva

     in reply to

     @molly0xfff fascinating. do you have an estimate on how many subscribers typically read newsletter posts?

   • Embed this notice
     Molly White (molly0xfff@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 04:10:13 JST Molly White

     in reply to

     • Sashin

     @sashin I self-host Ghost, which sends emails via Mailgun

   • Embed this notice
     Sashin (sashin@veganism.social)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 04:10:14 JST Sashin

     in reply to

     @molly0xfff What do you use to send emails? Button down?

   • Embed this notice
     🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 🐧 🥦 (methylcobalamin@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 05:12:09 JST 🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 🐧 🥦

     in reply to

     @molly0xfff The well known liberal and progressive names on substack can afford it. They don't want to lose readers who may not bother following them to their new platform.

   • Embed this notice
     Molly White (molly0xfff@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 05:12:09 JST Molly White

     in reply to

     • 🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 🐧 🥦

     @Methylcobalamin moving away from Substack is pretty much seamless on the subscriber end

   • Embed this notice
     Molly White (molly0xfff@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 05:15:50 JST Molly White

     in reply to

     For those who aren’t a fan of my 20,000 number, here’s a breakdown:

   • Embed this notice
     Guillaume Rossolini (guillaumerossolini@infosec.exchange)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 05:38:56 JST Guillaume Rossolini

     in reply to

     • Rob

     @simrob it is, she’s said 70%, but that doesn’t explain the jump in cost from 50k subs to 100k, it isn’t linear

   • Embed this notice
     Molly White (molly0xfff@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 05:38:56 JST Molly White

     in reply to

     • Guillaume Rossolini
     • Rob

     @GuillaumeRossolini @simrob yeah, it’s the mailsending.
     50k subs ≈ 100,000 emails/mo: $75
     100k subs ≈ 400,000 emails/mo: $400

   • Embed this notice
     Guillaume Rossolini (guillaumerossolini@infosec.exchange)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 05:39:00 JST Guillaume Rossolini

     in reply to

     • ineiti
     • Rob

     @simrob no, ineiti’s question is indeed about the self hosted version, and I was wondering the same

     @ineiti @molly0xfff

   • Embed this notice
     Rob (simrob@social.wub.site)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 05:39:00 JST Rob

     in reply to

     • Guillaume Rossolini
     • ineiti

     @GuillaumeRossolini @ineiti @molly0xfff oh, my apologies. Molly alluded to this: anywhere you're hosting from is almost certain to block outgoing emails, so you have to use a separate email delivery service like Mailgun. That's probably the vast majority of her expense.

   • Embed this notice
     Rob (simrob@social.wub.site)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 05:39:14 JST Rob

     in reply to

     • ineiti

     @ineiti @molly0xfff ghost pro isn't self-hosting, it's a company's managed hosting option

   • Embed this notice
     ineiti (ineiti@ioc.exchange)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 05:39:15 JST ineiti

     in reply to

     @molly0xfff Wow - I love people who can whip a table like that like it's nothing. Always takes me hours to get everything right...

     Probably stupid question: why is the self-hosting Ghost quintupling in price between 50k and 100k subscribers? What is the step taken?

   • Embed this notice
     🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 🐧 🥦 (methylcobalamin@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 05:39:36 JST 🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 🐧 🥦

     in reply to

     @molly0xfff Not matter how easy it is, I think a lot of people just wouldn't bother.

   • Embed this notice
     Molly White (molly0xfff@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 05:39:36 JST Molly White

     in reply to

     • 🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 🐧 🥦

     @Methylcobalamin it’s not a question of whether they’d bother, there’s no effort required by the subscriber

   • Embed this notice
     Molly White (molly0xfff@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 05:43:09 JST Molly White

     in reply to

     • Keith Harrison :clubtwit:

     @kharrison no, it’s 10k now

   • Embed this notice
     Keith Harrison :clubtwit: (kharrison@twit.social)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 05:43:10 JST Keith Harrison :clubtwit:

     in reply to

     @molly0xfff Isn’t ConvertKit only free up to 1,000? Pricing similar to mailchimp.

   • Embed this notice
     Molly White (molly0xfff@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 06:24:28 JST Molly White

     in reply to

     • 🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 🐧 🥦

     @Methylcobalamin It’s scary to shake things up if it’s your income, and there is certainly non-zero effort on the writer’s end in moving. Plus Substack really likes to talk up its network effects, to try to instill concern that people will see their growth flatline if they leave.

   • Embed this notice
     🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 🐧 🥦 (methylcobalamin@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 06:24:29 JST 🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 🐧 🥦

     in reply to

     @molly0xfff Why do you think people who can easily afford those new platform fees haven't been migrating?

   • Embed this notice
     Arne Babenhauserheide (arnebab@rollenspiel.social)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 06:58:22 JST Arne Babenhauserheide

     in reply to

     • Ludovic :Firefox: :FreeBSD:
     • Kenny

     @kenny113 Does RSS with simple username:password via .htaccess work?

     @molly0xfff @usul

   • Embed this notice
     Arne Babenhauserheide (arnebab@rollenspiel.social)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 06:58:23 JST Arne Babenhauserheide

     in reply to

     @molly0xfff Self-hosted Ghost looks like the most sensible option.

     And you can use the hosting to host your blog, too, as a point of contact.

   • Embed this notice
     Kenny (kenny113@infosec.exchange)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 06:58:23 JST Kenny

     in reply to

     • Ludovic :Firefox: :FreeBSD:

     @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?

   • Embed this notice
     Arne Babenhauserheide (arnebab@rollenspiel.social)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 07:02:49 JST Arne Babenhauserheide

     in reply to

     • publictorsten
     • Steve

     @publictorsten this *could* be solved with end-to-end signatures.

     GnuPG sign every email, at mailservers accept properly signed emails from recipients your users authorized by sending an email to you (the subscription email) which contains a one-time secret your mailserver checks (provided in the mailto:link as subject).

     If the different GnuPG frontends were actually compatible.
     @devtrash @molly0xfff

   • Embed this notice
     publictorsten (publictorsten@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 07:02:50 JST publictorsten

     in reply to

     • Steve

     @devtrash @molly0xfff To phrase it otherwise: a problem with moderation?

     Arne Babenhauserheide repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     publictorsten (publictorsten@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 07:02:57 JST publictorsten

     in reply to

     @molly0xfff Interesting. How has this happened? Why do we need expensive centralized services to use the very egalitarian protocol SMTP?

   • Embed this notice
     Steve (devtrash@hulvr.com)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 07:02:57 JST Steve

     in reply to

     • publictorsten

     @publictorsten @molly0xfff spammers

   • Embed this notice
     Molly White (molly0xfff@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 07:15:13 JST Molly White

     in reply to

     • huxley(fur)

     @huxley yes, it would be offset in most cases.

   • Embed this notice
     huxley(fur) (huxley@furry.engineer)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 07:15:14 JST huxley(fur)

     in reply to

     @molly0xfff stupid question, but isn't that cost offset by payment for the subs? if I have 20000 subs how much is that bringing in? (if self-hosting, I assume 20000 "subs" is no income at all)

   • Embed this notice
     Molly White (molly0xfff@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 07:28:24 JST Molly White

     in reply to

     • Jarek Kopeć

     @jarekkopec Substack has always boasted of portability, but they seem to be rapidly building walls with things like their “follow” feature. Ghost is excellent. Not personally super familiar with the others.

   • Embed this notice
     Jarek Kopeć (jarekkopec@pol.social)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 07:28:26 JST Jarek Kopeć

     in reply to

     @molly0xfff How do these platform compare when it comes to owners control of the user data? Is it easy to migrate between platforms?

   • Embed this notice
     Molly White (molly0xfff@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 08:00:13 JST Molly White

     in reply to

     • saxnot

     @saxnot mailing lists may be free but successfully doing bulk mailsending very much is not

   • Embed this notice
     saxnot (saxnot@chaos.social)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 08:00:15 JST saxnot

     in reply to

     @molly0xfff a newsletter is just a mailing list with only admins being able to send, right?
     mailing lists are free

   • Embed this notice
     Molly White (molly0xfff@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 08:29:46 JST Molly White

     in reply to

     • flo

     @flo kit is more expensive at my size. not sure about brevo because i’m apparently “enterprise” and would have to request a quote.

     that aside, self-hosted Ghost currently doesn’t support mailsending services besides Mailgun, though I hope they will build out support for it in the not too distant future

   • Embed this notice
     flo (flo@mastodon.debugco.de)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 08:29:58 JST flo

     in reply to

     @molly0xfff Not sure if they fit your needs, but kit and brevo seem a lot cheaper for your volume.

   • Embed this notice
     Stefan Monnier (monnier@oldbytes.space)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 09:11:45 JST Stefan Monnier

     in reply to

     @molly0xfff
     Lemmy? [ducks!]

   • Embed this notice
     d2718 (d2718@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 09:32:23 JST d2718

     in reply to

     @molly0xfff This is the most impressive piece of alt-text I have ever seen.

   • Embed this notice
     Molly White (molly0xfff@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 10:38:45 JST Molly White

     in reply to

     • jeremiah

     @jeremiah they hide the price because it’s not an up-front flat fee (like most of its competitors), but a cut of subscription revenue

   • Embed this notice
     jeremiah (jeremiah@tldr.nettime.org)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 10:38:47 JST jeremiah

     in reply to

     @molly0xfff substack costs $700/month?! God damn. I thought it was more they were providing a solid enough product at VC subsidy prices.

   • Embed this notice
     Arne Babenhauserheide (arnebab@rollenspiel.social)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 19:51:57 JST Arne Babenhauserheide

     in reply to

     • vampirdaddy

     @vampirdaddy I think checking the sig should be enough, yes.

     Since this is a likely non-sensitive newsletter, it wouldn’t even have to be encrypted. The initial subscription mail just has the intention of telling the receiver mailserver that the newsletter address is genuine.

   • Embed this notice
     vampirdaddy (vampirdaddy@chaos.social)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 19:51:58 JST vampirdaddy

     in reply to

     • Arne Babenhauserheide

     @ArneBab Is PGP crypt-then-sign or sign-then-crypt?
     If the first, then directly checking the signature should be sufficient?

   • Embed this notice
     Kenny (kenny113@infosec.exchange)'s status on Thursday, 19-Dec-2024 00:43:57 JST Kenny

     in reply to

     • Ludovic :Firefox: :FreeBSD:
     • 404 Media
     • truh

     @truh @molly0xfff @usul strange how many replies I get from people I didn’t ask on mastodon. but since we’re here…
     certainly there are two sides to that coin. likewise, there are consumers who would be interested in subscribing but would never pay to get more email either. paid email newsletters don’t make a lot of sense to a lot of people. and clearly there are huge distribution issues with email (as we’re discussing here) which can be overcome with different distribution channels. For example, @404mediaco offers a public RSS feed for all articles, but you simply can’t read full articles for members-only content. I would be interested to hear from someone who offers subscription content about why they chose the distribution channel they chose and if they see any “universal solutions” on the horizon.

   • Embed this notice
     truh (truh@shark.community)'s status on Thursday, 19-Dec-2024 00:44:27 JST truh

     in reply to

     • Ludovic :Firefox: :FreeBSD:
     • Kenny

     @kenny113 @molly0xfff @usul I'd guess that the problem is more that you loose a lot of your readers if RSS is the only form of subscription you offer.

     Feed token seems good enough for that purpose. Most probably also work with basic auth but I'm not sure that's really better in any way.

   • Embed this notice
     Molly White (molly0xfff@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 19-Dec-2024 01:25:35 JST Molly White

     in reply to

     • Humphrey Archer

     @screwturn Scroll down for a chart comparing pricing for newsletters of all sizes.

   • Embed this notice
     Humphrey Archer (screwturn@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 19-Dec-2024 01:25:36 JST Humphrey Archer

     in reply to

     @molly0xfff
     This made me laugh

     I have 31 subscribers to my newsletter, and the notion of having 20,000 sounds so unlikely that it is funny.

     Thanks

   • Embed this notice
     Molly White (molly0xfff@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 19-Dec-2024 02:23:13 JST Molly White

     in reply to

     • Jerome (He/Him)
     • Ludovic :Firefox: :FreeBSD:

     @jeromechoo @usul I consider those to fall into the same category of services where you pay someone to do mailsending for you

   • Embed this notice
     Jerome (He/Him) (jeromechoo@masto.ai)'s status on Thursday, 19-Dec-2024 02:23:14 JST Jerome (He/Him)

     in reply to

     • Ludovic :Firefox: :FreeBSD:

     @molly0xfff @usul Is this true even with tools like Sendy that uses Amazon SES?