Fertit

Spent the last month building Fertit - basically a newsletter manager but you bring your own SMTP and skip the DevOps nightmare. All the features (subscriber management, admin dashboard, custom preferences) without the infrastructure markup. The math that broke me: Mailchimp: $230/month for 15k contacts My solution: $10/month infrastructure + $10 SendGrid = unlimited What I learned: The "enterprise" features are mostly database operations with SMTP APIs. But the 3 weeks of Go/PostgreSQL/Redis setup explains why people just pay ConvertKit $300/month. Here's the thing: Even open-sourcing it, I realized most people don't want to deal with servers, Docker configs, and database migrations. So I built an affordable hosted service starting at $5/month. More features and security measurements, zero setup - just bring your SMTP and start sending.

I just canceled my Mailchimp account after hitting their "Standard" plan limits. $230/month to send emails to 15k subscribers feels insane when my entire server infrastructure costs $50/month. Started building my own newsletter platform (Fertit) and realized most of the "premium" features are just basic CRUD operations with SMTP integration. The math is wild: Mailchimp Standard: $230/month for 15k contacts My current costs: $50/month for unlimited (using my own SMTP) But then I realized why people pay it - the setup/maintenance time is brutal. Spent 3 weeks just getting subscriber management right. So the real question: would you pay $10/month for a middle ground? All the features of the big players, but you bring your own SMTP (SendGrid, Mailgun, etc.) and own your data? Currently testing this approach - curious if others see the same pr