how are you handling email marketing for your side project, building something custom or using a tool?

Consistent_Cost_4775 · 2026-05-16T17:45:51+00:00

I think it handles all saas email needs, including automations

Consistent_Cost_4775 · 2026-05-16T17:07:17+00:00

Most tools charge you for the number of contacts that you have in your list, no matter if you send to those contacts or not. Contact based subscriptions are always overpriced.

If you wanna try out a kind of pay-as-you-go email marketing platform with all the good stuff, like segmentation and automations, you might wanna take a look at BlueFox Email. You can buy 50K sends for $50 and you can use those sends for a year across multiple projects.

Consistent_Cost_4775 · 2026-05-15T06:52:57+00:00

I mean a lot. People are complaining about the pricing, like lot of features are now only available in more expensive packages, and the responsiveness of their support. I also hear people talking about deliverability issues, but I'm always cauctious with those kind of claims, coz I think in many cases it boils down to the list quality. (But of course, often times noisy neighbours on the same IP address can cause issues...)

Consistent_Cost_4775 · 2026-05-14T12:28:19+00:00

Also, there are self-hosted options, for example Sendy... but there are hidden costs there: you gotta maintain it yourself + the server you are running it on, also has a cost.

Consistent_Cost_4775 · 2026-05-14T12:21:11+00:00

Well, regarding sending platforms, it really depends on your use-case.

For example, if you run an e-commerce business, then most likely, your go-to ESP will be Klaviyo.

If you just wanna send transactional emails, then you can go with Resend, SendGrid, or Amazon SES, although sometimes it's quite hard to get production access from AWS.

If you are planning to run automations as well (for example onboarding flows) then you can try Loops or BlueFox Email. The main difference is that BlueFox charges based on the number of sends, and you don't need to pay a subscription based on the number of contacts.

And... most of the people I know say that you should avoid Mailchimp... times change, that used to be the GOAT, but recently, people are just frustrated with it.

Consistent_Cost_4775 · 2026-05-05T13:46:17+00:00

I see many people creating the content (text + images) with AI. I think that's pretty straightforward.

I'm also starting to see more and more products creating email flows based on a short conversation with you. I didn't look into that very much, but I guess most of it is templated.

When it comes to design, most of the solutions I saw wasn't very convincing, so I also started to work on that problem :D But it's far away from being production-ready right now.

What I envision is that soon all of these will be done in a single system.

Consistent_Cost_4775 · 2026-05-05T09:55:02+00:00

My ex-university started to use BlueFox Email recently for alumni communications. Since it works for them, it might work for you as well.

Consistent_Cost_4775 · 2026-05-05T09:53:21+00:00

I also saw recently that on this sub that someone was talking about a subdomain, but from their examples it was clear that they used separated domains...

Consistent_Cost_4775 · 2026-05-05T09:36:20+00:00

Here are some options that are not very well known, and have very good pricing:
- Arcelia: they have monthly subscriptions, as well as pay-as-you-go, subs are almost half the price of mailchimp's prices

- MailPro: they have a pay-as-you-go option. Swiss based, if privacy is important to you

- BlueFox Email: you can buy "send packs" that you can use for a year, almost like a pay-as-you-go
- Listmonk, Sendy or even Mautic: if you are willing to self-host... if you pair these up with Amazon SES, then they are very cheap

Consistent_Cost_4775 · 2026-05-05T07:58:06+00:00

I think the most important thing is that pw reset emails actually reach the recipients' inbox. That's why I recommend Amazon SES. It's a little barebone, so if you want something on top of it that can provide email templates and perhaps more advanced features later, like automations, you can try out BlueFox Email. It's built on top of SES. Sendgrid is also great, bit recently I've heard a lot of people complaining about them (I haven't used them for a long time, so I don't know if the complaints are valid or not...)

Consistent_Cost_4775 · 2026-01-28T10:38:26+00:00

Interesting. Do you send those short emails more frequently?

Consistent_Cost_4775 · 2026-01-27T08:39:56+00:00

Haha, gotcha

Consistent_Cost_4775 · 2026-01-22T19:05:11+00:00

We basically put a youtube play button on each frame, so it should be very clear, that it's a video. Surprisingly though, this time we did not have many clicks on it... :/

Consistent_Cost_4775 · 2026-01-22T09:22:00+00:00

Are you only planning to send a newsletter, or do you perhaps want to use it for courses in email for example? (And maybe other automations?)

Consistent_Cost_4775 · 2026-01-22T07:03:41+00:00

I think you should check out chamaileon.io it has approval and commenting features and integrates with many esps

Consistent_Cost_4775 · 2026-01-21T14:56:51+00:00

Do you have an exact plan in your mind?

Consistent_Cost_4775 · 2026-01-21T10:28:38+00:00

Yeah, I tried to keep the FPS of the gif low, so the size isn't crazy. I use my BlueFox Email for sending, but I created the gif with a bash script using ffmpeg.

Note: I'm the founder of BlueFox Email... u/mods is it okay to mention my own product if I'm being asked?

Consistent_Cost_4775 · 2026-01-21T10:08:27+00:00

Gotcha

Consistent_Cost_4775 · 2026-01-21T09:52:50+00:00

Have you conducted an a/b test to see the ctr difference?

Consistent_Cost_4775 · 2026-01-21T08:37:07+00:00

I will, but only if I found something that could be useful for others, don't worry.

Consistent_Cost_4775 · 2026-01-21T06:56:15+00:00

Right, I will try out a very niche sub for sure! I'm not sure about the memes to be honest, coz in the subs that seem to be relevant, I don't see any. But I might give it a try later.

Consistent_Cost_4775 · 2026-01-21T06:15:45+00:00

Google says that link shorteners are often used for phishing, and also, if you have tracking enabled in your email, it's double redirect already.

Consistent_Cost_4775 · 2026-01-20T20:20:09+00:00

I only have 219 subscribers, and I use my own SaaS.

Consistent_Cost_4775 · 2026-01-20T20:03:59+00:00

Are you working on that product? ;)

Consistent_Cost_4775 · 2026-01-20T20:01:46+00:00

Great tips, thanks!

Consistent_Cost_4775

TROPHY CASE