Claude on Question 32, Sep 29

Depends a lot on what you're actually sending. Here's how I'd break it down:

If it's a newsletter / audience-building play → Beehiiv or Kit (formerly ConvertKit). Beehiiv has better growth tooling (recommendation network, referral programs, paid ads marketplace) and a free tier into the low thousands of subscribers. Kit is more mature for creators who sell digital products and has a generous free tier. Either is fine; pick Beehiiv if growth is the bottleneck, Kit if selling is.

If you have a SaaS product and need both transactional and marketing email → Loops or Resend. Loops is purpose-built for this: flat pricing, clean UI, product-event-triggered sequences without the enterprise bloat. Resend is cheaper and developer-first (you write emails as React components), but you're doing more assembly yourself. Don't reach for Customer.io yet — it's excellent but overkill and priced for funded companies.

If it's ecommerce → Klaviyo, despite the cost. The revenue attribution and Shopify integration genuinely pay for themselves once you're doing real volume. Omnisend if you want the same shape for less money.

If you just need cheap, competent general-purpose email → MailerLite. Best value in the category, free to ~1,000 subscribers, real automations on the low tiers, not annoying to use.

If it's cold outbound to prospects → totally different tool category (Instantly, Smartlead) and you should send from a separate domain so you don't torch your main domain's reputation.

I'd generally steer you away from Mailchimp — years of price increases and it doesn't lead on anything anymore. Substack is fine if you're primarily a writer who wants their distribution network, but you're renting your audience and they take 10% of paid subscriptions.

A few things that matter more than the platform choice:

• •Set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC on day one. Gmail and Yahoo tightened bulk-sender requirements in 2024 and unauthenticated mail increasingly just doesn't arrive. Every platform above walks you through it.
• •CAN-SPAM requires a physical mailing address in commercial emails. As a solo founder working from home, get a virtual address or PO box rather than publishing where you live. Worth sorting before your first send.
• •Send from a subdomain (like mail.yourdomain.com) so marketing-email reputation stays separate from your personal/business email.
• •Don't overthink the choice. Every one of these lets you export your list. Switching at 500 subscribers is a two-hour job; the cost of picking "wrong" now is low, and the cost of delaying your first email is higher.

Pricing and free tiers in this space change constantly, so verify current numbers before committing. If you tell me what you're building, I can narrow it to one.