Your newsletter provider is BSing you

Cross-posted from AI Marketing for Storytellers.

Did you know that almost all newsletter providers are re-skinning Amazon’s SES system and charging you 1000x what it actually costs to send an email?

Well now do you do!

On my eternal hunt quest to earn out my two instances of Claude Code (it’s too much, really, I should cancel one, even I’m not that cool) — I cranked out a competitor to my newsletter provider last night.

I’d recently cancelled Omnisend and Klayvio both in a fit of pique because they were soooooo $$$ and honestly I wanted Code way more (and it will definitely earn out, hooboy!)

Anyhow — last night, two shifts into a three shift stretch, brain fried, so tired I could cry, not kidding, I managed to sit up right on the couch through three Schitt’s Creek reruns after work while Code talked me through this project.

All I had to do was to have an AWS account (which I already had) and the ability to change my records on Namecheap (not a big deal, Code just told me what to do) and now, voila!

Basically, we exported all of my subscribers from both places, uploaded them into Supabase (which is my new-new boyfriend!) and now….

The glory of doing this, apart from getting to be incredibly cheap, is that if I want to email a beautiful newsletter to just people who bought book three of my Monster Security Agency series’s paperbacks, plus people who have emailed me back before…

I can just tell an agent to do that, and it can.

I had it email Novae and it send him this of its own accord, LOL <3

I don’t have to dick around with segments or anything, that’s all on the Supabase side.

And y’all don’t even WANT to know what this SHIT can do with SHOPIFY automatically (I’ll be demo’ing that on the call on Friday, it is INSANE.)

When I think of the literal thousands of dollars I’m going to save this year from this — it makes me happy, and then it makes me mad.

Because the fact that we’ve all been paying out the nose for ‘more subscribers’ from assorted newsletter providers this WHOLE TIME when their costs on the back end have literally been a dime per thousand sends?

Or, as Code told me:

One. Goddamned. Dime.

Do you know how many baby authors haven’t been able to keep a newsletter subscription alive because even $20/month was too much?

And here it was, just a huge ass mark-up for nothing — it’s not like keeping ‘extra spreadsheet rows’ was holding things back. (Same same as it doesn’t ‘hurt’ excel to have additional rows in your spreadsheet, heh!)

I’ve got to warm up my account a little bit here on the far side, which I’ll do, and I’ll report back — here’s my plan, as per Code —

Oh and re: what else it can do?

HA.

This is gonna be such a big month for me here, I’m glad I can finally tell my newsletter people about it, I haven’t emailed them since Christmas!

xo!

Cassie

PS: all my AIs know I love spiders. Also they’re my spider army, lol, s’why the whole spider emoji all the time, lol.