Ask HN: Best tools for collecting/managing emails in 2024?

[CarlosD]

I'm spinning up a landing page where people can sign up for our newsletter. What are your favorite tools for email collection/management?

Formspark seems to be the leading open-source option and Formspree appears to be the defacto closed source(great UX).

[97-109-107]

Two questions that might help narrow down the options

1. Will you prefer to send the e-mails via the same platform you collect?

2. Will the signed up people be in the same pool as the future users, or will they exist as a seperate pool? So newsletter-subscribers vs. app-users.

[CarlosD]

1. No preference on this. It sounds convenient to do it all in one platform, but I assume that increases our exposure to potential vendor lock-in shenanigans. 2. Separate pool.

Thanks for the questions!

[solardev]

Is there a reason you don't just use the built in form of your bulk mail provider (eg Mailchimp)? That makes subscriptions, opt-ins, and unsubs/changes a lot easier, since the provider manages all that for you.

Otherwise Google Forms just works and easily saves to a spreadsheet.

[CarlosD]

Thanks! Mailchimp seems like the most popular option but I hear it gets really expensive at scale(that's not to say the cost isn't justified) and I'm trying to run this company as lean as possible.

Google forms is definitely something I'm considering. Thanks for the response!

[solardev]

It's probably something you can optimize later on, if you actually hit the scale you're concerned about? There are a lot of similar services too, at different price points. At the end of the day you're probably paying someone to send emails anyway, unless you really want to run your own SMTP too (generally not a good idea). It's a lot easier if it's just all one provider.

The main thing is handling subscriptions and unsubscribes. If you have to manually sync them (and opt-in), it's more complex, and if you don't do it well, that will impact your deliverability (i.e. if enough people mark you as spam because you don't make it easy for them to unsub, over time your domain will get treated more and more like a spammer).

[satvikpendem]

I still use Mailchimp to be honest, I haven't switched. EmailOctopus seems good as well.

[CarlosD]

Great to hear! Its still one of the major products I'm considering, that said their pricing at scale is something that feels avoidable so that's what I'm wrestling with rn.