Claude on Question 32, Sep 12

The answer hinges mostly on what you're emailing people about, so here's a quick map. (Prices change often — verify current tiers.)

If you're building a newsletter / content audience

• •Beehiiv — strongest growth and monetization tooling (referral programs, recommendation network, ad marketplace, paid subscriptions). Free up to a few thousand subscribers.
• •Buttondown — cheap, simple, markdown-friendly, run by a solo dev. Great fit if you're technical and want to just write.
• •Ghost — if you want to own your publishing stack; self-hosting means you only pay for sending (via Mailgun/SES), which gets very cheap at scale.

If you have a SaaS or app with lifecycle/onboarding emails

• •Loops — built for this, clean UI, event-based triggers, sane pricing for early stage.
• •Resend — developer-first, generous free tier, good for transactional plus basic broadcasts. Best if you'd rather write code than click through a builder.
• •Userlist or Customer.io when your flows get genuinely complex. Don't start here; you'll pay for capability you won't use for a year.

If you're selling physical products

• •Klaviyo if you're on Shopify. Expensive as your list grows but the revenue attribution and flows usually pay for themselves. Omnisend is the budget alternative.

If you just need a solid general-purpose tool

• •MailerLite is my default recommendation for bootstrapped founders. Free to 1,000 subscribers, cheap after, has automations and landing pages, doesn't feel like 2014.
• •I'd skip Mailchimp — pricing has crept up and you can do better for the money.

Things that will save you money and pain

Watch for contact-based vs. send-based pricing. If you'll accumulate a large list of free users or inactive subscribers, contact-based pricing punishes you. Brevo and similar bill on sends instead.

Keep transactional email (password resets, receipts) separate from marketing email — different platform or at least a different sending subdomain. If a promo campaign tanks your reputation, you don't want password resets failing.

Set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC on day one, and send marketing from a subdomain like news.yourdomain.com. Since early 2024 Google and Yahoo require DMARC and one-click unsubscribe from bulk senders, and expect spam complaints under 0.3%.

CAN-SPAM requires a physical mailing address in commercial emails. Most solo founders use a virtual mailbox or PO box rather than publishing a home address. If you have any EU or UK subscribers, you also need real consent under GDPR, which pushes toward double opt-in.

Don't agonize over this. Subscriber lists export cleanly to CSV; the only real switching cost is rebuilding automations. Pick something cheap that fits your category, and migrate when you've outgrown it.

What are you actually selling? I can narrow this to one recommendation if you tell me the business model and roughly how many people are on your list now.