Show HN: I made an open source Mailchimp RSS-to-Email alternative(github.com)
github.com
Show HN: I made an open source Mailchimp RSS-to-Email alternative
https://github.com/ElliotKillick/rss2newsletter
37 comments
I prefer it the other way around: https://kill-the-newsletter.com/
I've built a similar app before I found out about this.
https://newsletters.love
If anyone wants to give it a try, please give me your feedback!
https://newsletters.love
If anyone wants to give it a try, please give me your feedback!
it looks a bit unfinished tbh and is pretty slow. HN success hug of death?
I built something similar: https://newsletterify.com but is also not really finished. There's a copy cat of my product of which I'm not sharing the link, but I love that there is some competition out there. I love reading newsletters and aggregated information when I have the time, but emails aren't really the medium imho
I built something similar: https://newsletterify.com but is also not really finished. There's a copy cat of my product of which I'm not sharing the link, but I love that there is some competition out there. I love reading newsletters and aggregated information when I have the time, but emails aren't really the medium imho
Thanks for the feedback!
So sorry that you're experiencing slowness. I haven't done any performance test on it as for the past few months its mostly been used by just friends and family.
I hope it is faster now.
Tbh, I'm not sure what else to build on top of it as when I built it, I just wanted a safe and private place to be able to curate newsletters without exposing my main email address and allow friends to view my subscriptions.
What do you think feels needs to be touched up? Is it the UI?
So sorry that you're experiencing slowness. I haven't done any performance test on it as for the past few months its mostly been used by just friends and family.
I hope it is faster now.
Tbh, I'm not sure what else to build on top of it as when I built it, I just wanted a safe and private place to be able to curate newsletters without exposing my main email address and allow friends to view my subscriptions.
What do you think feels needs to be touched up? Is it the UI?
we're solving the same problem then ;)
for me it definitely is the UI! you could think about adding a UI kit on top of it for a more polished look? and the biggest downturn for me personally is the google login. I wish you good luck with the project mate!
for me it definitely is the UI! you could think about adding a UI kit on top of it for a more polished look? and the biggest downturn for me personally is the google login. I wish you good luck with the project mate!
For those clicking, in contrast to the other options this one is paid. Most basic package is $3.99/month or $39.99/year.
Yup, and the prices will change, I just haven't gotten to that part yet. I did a bigger rewrite that I had to do first (moved backend to supabase, introduced pagination everywhere). New pricing will be up asap and will be around $6.99/$69.99 for a lite version (small number of summaries) and $9.99/$9.99 for the regular plan. Will include 7+ days of free trial. That's almost half of the copy cat btw. If anyone's interested, I can get in touch after I updated the pricing
I don't want to discourage you, but the prices look insane. Especially considering that you compete with competitors that are free.
Please be very clear about your USPs and your target audience.
Please be very clear about your USPs and your target audience.
In your view, how do you think I compete with these "free" services? And how can they stay free, if they have to pay 1) their time 2) their compute infrastructure and 3) LLMS and 4) email receiving (that's pretty cost intense btw). And if they don't monetize, how long do you think they'll stick around and get new features all the time?
I really don't get the sentiment on HN that everything should be free, sorry.
I really don't get the sentiment on HN that everything should be free, sorry.
> I really don't get the sentiment on HN that everything should be free, sorry.
That’s not what your parent comment is arguing. The point is that it’s hard to sustain a business against competitors which offer the same thing for free, and the higher your price point the harder it is.
Maybe you aren’t offering the same thing or your service is so much better that it is worth the price, but that’s a different argument.
> And how can they stay free (…), how long do you think they'll stick around and get new features all the time?
I use one of this other services. It is open-source and I don’t know what their costs are, but it’s been working for me for years. I have zero need for more features from them, I’m happy with the simplicity. That I know of they don’t have LLM costs because they don’t use LLMs, and to me that is a plus. If your service is using LLMs, that honestly makes me less interested in it.
That’s not what your parent comment is arguing. The point is that it’s hard to sustain a business against competitors which offer the same thing for free, and the higher your price point the harder it is.
Maybe you aren’t offering the same thing or your service is so much better that it is worth the price, but that’s a different argument.
> And how can they stay free (…), how long do you think they'll stick around and get new features all the time?
I use one of this other services. It is open-source and I don’t know what their costs are, but it’s been working for me for years. I have zero need for more features from them, I’m happy with the simplicity. That I know of they don’t have LLM costs because they don’t use LLMs, and to me that is a plus. If your service is using LLMs, that honestly makes me less interested in it.
That's fine, I'd say that the parent comment didn't check out the website before arguing over the price. I'd say it's an entirely different service. Great that whatever solution you use works for you, love that. I wanted something more, so I built my solution. I don't think I'll ever get rich, but the cost structure is prohibitive just for myself.
nice. feedbin also do this https://feedbin.com
And iirc Newsblur
I use it all the time on feedbin
I use it all the time on feedbin
Notifier - https://notifier.in/ is another service I use to convert email newsletters to RSS.
Perhaps a bit OT, but will really appreciate inputs on this.
There have been an influx of such tools, and understandably so, related to email lists. Based on various comments, I feel that the biggest item driving success around email is around email deliverability.
What are the the skills and secret sauce of companies that claim to do very reliable email deliverability, and I'm failing to understand why isn't it as simple as doing the right configurations and setting it up using Amazon SES.
Any email gurus to please throw actionable light on this?
There have been an influx of such tools, and understandably so, related to email lists. Based on various comments, I feel that the biggest item driving success around email is around email deliverability.
What are the the skills and secret sauce of companies that claim to do very reliable email deliverability, and I'm failing to understand why isn't it as simple as doing the right configurations and setting it up using Amazon SES.
Any email gurus to please throw actionable light on this?
> What are the the skills and secret sauce of companies that claim to do very reliable email deliverability, and I'm failing to understand why isn't it as simple as doing the right configurations and setting it up using Amazon SES.
Email deliverability is reputation based (beyond IP) and takes into account technical, reputational and behavioural factors.
Technical basically means getting stuff like SPF, DKIM and DMARC right.
Reputational means you’re sending from a reputable IP and that the domain you’re sending from is reputable. If you’re too small to warrant your own IP, you need to be on a shared one with other good senders.
Behavioural just means that your recipients are engaging with your emails in a manner that the inbox provider deems to be positive.
Some of this stuff is a bit challenging to setup, or it’s a bit tough to build the reputation, there’s no real secret sauce to it though.
Email deliverability is reputation based (beyond IP) and takes into account technical, reputational and behavioural factors.
Technical basically means getting stuff like SPF, DKIM and DMARC right.
Reputational means you’re sending from a reputable IP and that the domain you’re sending from is reputable. If you’re too small to warrant your own IP, you need to be on a shared one with other good senders.
Behavioural just means that your recipients are engaging with your emails in a manner that the inbox provider deems to be positive.
Some of this stuff is a bit challenging to setup, or it’s a bit tough to build the reputation, there’s no real secret sauce to it though.
I wrote about a few of the secret sauce tricks here: https://jacobfilipp.com/blocklistings/
It's very challenging to maintain good mailer reputation when you let "the public" use your IP addresses (easier to deal with a dozen enterprise mailers than a million mom-and-pop shops). Some vendors use psychological nudges ("reminder: our contract forbids web-scraped and purchased lists"). Some use technical means to block problematic email addresses. Some buy/scrape lists on the down-low and use them to check if customers are uploading scraped lists...
It's very challenging to maintain good mailer reputation when you let "the public" use your IP addresses (easier to deal with a dozen enterprise mailers than a million mom-and-pop shops). Some vendors use psychological nudges ("reminder: our contract forbids web-scraped and purchased lists"). Some use technical means to block problematic email addresses. Some buy/scrape lists on the down-low and use them to check if customers are uploading scraped lists...
How did you justify paying $6,000/year for a dedicated IP address? SES will provide you with the same thing for $25/month (https://aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing/#Amazon_SES_Pricing). I noticed your statistics didn't include SES. To me, mystery surrounding reliable email deliverability is primarily a tactic some vendors use to entice non-technical people into relying on their proprietary email marketing solution.
The reason we are paying $6k/year for something that normally costa $20 is that we've been with this Marketing Automation provider fir many years, and a lot of our internal training/documentation/integrations are tailored to them. The $6k price tag is not a big enough fraction of our contract to justify switching. And, importantly, all of the other enterpriae-scale marketing automation vendors play this exact same game (the main competitor is owned by Oracle...). We're getting screwed, but I chose to lose this battle in order to reach my greater objectives :-)
The reasons why the stats don't include SES is because the target audience for this article is fairly narrow: it is people at orgs that pay for "Marketing Automation" software. That software has capabilities beyond just email sending, and is used for marketing (hence different deliverability challengea than those at SES, which has a broad customer base and can be used for transactional/alerting emails)
Yes, "deliverability" is often used as something vendors use to spook people. It only matters at scale (like >10,000 people per mailing). And many vendors dont actually know what theyre doing.
I'll be glad to answer more questions on this thread or through email (its in my profile)
The reasons why the stats don't include SES is because the target audience for this article is fairly narrow: it is people at orgs that pay for "Marketing Automation" software. That software has capabilities beyond just email sending, and is used for marketing (hence different deliverability challengea than those at SES, which has a broad customer base and can be used for transactional/alerting emails)
Yes, "deliverability" is often used as something vendors use to spook people. It only matters at scale (like >10,000 people per mailing). And many vendors dont actually know what theyre doing.
I'll be glad to answer more questions on this thread or through email (its in my profile)
Email deliverability is no secret. Just send an email to one of many email deliverability testers to find out the spammyness of your email: https://www.mail-tester.com
The sender IP address is a large component in determining email spammyness. This is why SES allows you to pay extra for a dedicated IP address (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/dg/dedicated-ip.html). However, it's not something you will likely need unless you send in large volumes.
The sender IP address is a large component in determining email spammyness. This is why SES allows you to pay extra for a dedicated IP address (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/dg/dedicated-ip.html). However, it's not something you will likely need unless you send in large volumes.
It's definitely no secret but those testers do not provide the full story. No do IP blocklist checkers - not all blocklists are created equal, nor do most have any impact at all.
For most senders, whilst IP reputation does play a role, as long as you're on a decent platform the majority of your deliverability concerns will be surrounding your own domain's reputation. Your domain reputation is directly influenced by your sending behaviour. You need to be sending to people who want to receive your email and will engage with it.
iamacyborg's response above is spot on.
For most senders, whilst IP reputation does play a role, as long as you're on a decent platform the majority of your deliverability concerns will be surrounding your own domain's reputation. Your domain reputation is directly influenced by your sending behaviour. You need to be sending to people who want to receive your email and will engage with it.
iamacyborg's response above is spot on.
I was surprised, coming back to newsletters, how many newsletter platforms don't support RSS-to-newsletter. I've hacked a work-around that I'm not happy with, but I look forward to digging into this.
A lot of devs and PMs under age 30 have never heard of RSS, or if they have it's not something they ever used, and not top-of-mind when it comes to features.
Maybe, but another thought I had while scanning newsletter services is that they haven't really evolved or changed in many years. Substack would suggest email isn't quite dead, but email feels at-risk. That said, I support both newsletters and Substack but I do a lot of manual copy-and-pasting. I also had to hand-code my own Wordpress newsletter content script to generate something that could then be cross-deployed to newsletters.
None of it feels like an ecosystem.. it feels like feature sets that atrophied about 10 years ago, and lack any ongoing creativity or innovation or product development.
None of it feels like an ecosystem.. it feels like feature sets that atrophied about 10 years ago, and lack any ongoing creativity or innovation or product development.
> None of it feels like an ecosystem.. it feels like feature sets that atrophied about 10 years ago, and lack any ongoing creativity or innovation or product development.
From my viewpoint, most of the development in email tools over the last decade has been in the data processing realm.
ie, collecting data or improving the quantity and quality of integrations and then allowing newsletter senders to segment and personalise emails based on that. The more advanced tools allow for proper templating languages and ML based data models such as RFM, recommendation systems, etc.
Newsletters feel like a mostly solved problem with very little further product development required, from where I'm seeing things.
From my viewpoint, most of the development in email tools over the last decade has been in the data processing realm.
ie, collecting data or improving the quantity and quality of integrations and then allowing newsletter senders to segment and personalise emails based on that. The more advanced tools allow for proper templating languages and ML based data models such as RFM, recommendation systems, etc.
Newsletters feel like a mostly solved problem with very little further product development required, from where I'm seeing things.
I don't think it's that surprising, really.
Email doesn't support the general markup you can often expect to see in a blog post and email to rss tools to date haven't offered good means of filtering the output to tidy that up, specifically with things like inlining styles which remains important.
Folks who care about sending good emails quickly realised that the tools just aren't good enough so have resorted to sending the emails separately.
There are obviously other factors at play but that was a big one for me when I looked at the tooling a decade ago when I used SFMC (which offered email to rss functionality).
Email doesn't support the general markup you can often expect to see in a blog post and email to rss tools to date haven't offered good means of filtering the output to tidy that up, specifically with things like inlining styles which remains important.
Folks who care about sending good emails quickly realised that the tools just aren't good enough so have resorted to sending the emails separately.
There are obviously other factors at play but that was a big one for me when I looked at the tooling a decade ago when I used SFMC (which offered email to rss functionality).
Listmonk is a seriously awesome piece of software!
Have used it to run multiple newsletters, over various version upgrades (almost all stress free), and even written some custom integrations with the API.
https://listmonk.app
Have used it to run multiple newsletters, over various version upgrades (almost all stress free), and even written some custom integrations with the API.
https://listmonk.app
This is cool—happy to see more stuff like this. I like the idea of creating a private RSS feed with a CMS and having it ship out to a service like this automagically.
This is great and very happy to see it. Mailchimp is annoyingly expensive for what it is.
With that said the sending of the emails is the easy part. Deliverability is hard.
Sending via SES is pretty likely to go straight to spam folders or worse. Granted if it’s 100% opt-in and you have the kind of audience that will hunt for the email and mark it as valid you’ll probably improve and be ok long term but it’s something to think about.
With that said the sending of the emails is the easy part. Deliverability is hard.
Sending via SES is pretty likely to go straight to spam folders or worse. Granted if it’s 100% opt-in and you have the kind of audience that will hunt for the email and mark it as valid you’ll probably improve and be ok long term but it’s something to think about.
Thanks! In my personal experience, I've had success delivering to the inboxes of Gmail, Outlook, and Zoho Mail with SES. However, my newsletter is entirely opt-in on my website. When I signed up for SES, there was a human review as to what I would be sending. So, I think Amazon understands spam is an issue, too.
Listmonk supports many email providers though, if your needs outgrow SES.
Listmonk supports many email providers though, if your needs outgrow SES.
I’ve used SES for nearly a decade. It’s fine if you stick with it.
Very cool! We built something similar but is not self hosted: https://pico.sh/feeds
How do you handle Reddit feeds? We found those to be tricky to get right because it seems like Reddit doesn’t want you to use rss
How do you handle Reddit feeds? We found those to be tricky to get right because it seems like Reddit doesn’t want you to use rss
Oh, nice! I recall Reddit did support RSS at one point, I didn't realize they limited it. rss2newsletter is only ~300 lines of code right now and I'd prefer to keep it more on the minimal side of things. But, that's definitely a cool feature to have.
Just what I was looking for. Thanks!
My pleasure!
I built a simple self hosting micro blogging platform which can also ingests rss feeds and turn them into posts (lamb — it’s in alpha) so that could produce a master feed and hook nicely into this.
For sure, converting feeds into emails in that direction is something I've seen as a sticking point for a lot of projects. I'm glad I could fill that gap for you.
The idea for this project came out of necessity, as I wanted to share my articles via email newsletter. I was looking for a super minimal, lightweight, and open source solution, and when none existed, I decided to create one.
For any sizable number of email recipients, a popular platform like Mailchimp will easily cost you hundreds or even thousands per month in per-contact fees. rss2newsletter, on the other hand, allows you to use Amazon SES, so you can reach your audience at pennies on the dollar.
Beyond these factors, I also wanted something that could run on an internet-connected potato it's so easy on your system and fully automated so you can set it and forget it.
So, I created (and put under a free software license):
https://github.com/ElliotKillick/rss2newsletter
rss2newsletter (integrating with Listmonk and Amazon SES for ultra-low-cost emails) is a drop-in solution that requires almost no setup besides connecting with SES and styling your emails. It's also competitive at what it does with proprietary self-hosted solutions like Sendy, which requires your system/VPS to have some rather beefy specs to run well.
Let me know if there are any other features you would like to see. I hope you can find my project helpful to you!