5 Best Newsletter Platforms for Authors in 2025

Which is the best for you?

Since the dawn of indie publishing, everyone imaginable has been beating the drum of “your reader newsletter is your author networth”.

Today is not another plea to convince you of that.

Instead, I want to help you turn your newsletter into cold hard cash by using the best platform for YOU.

The following top 5 Newsletter Platforms for Authors in 2025 are listed in no particular order.

Instead, I share for each one:

• Who it is best for

• The great features

• The bad features

• The pricing

By the end, if you are looking for a new newsletter platform in 2025 you should have clarity on which one will be best for your author business 😊.

First, what makes a newsletter valuable?

Before we can even evaluate the best newsletter platforms, we have to understand how we can convert a newsletter list into cash.

To use the analogy of a farm:

1. Your email list of readers is the plot of land.

   1. Some authors have large plots of land that are fallow (aka you could be making a lot more money from your list!).

   2. Other plots of land have been overharvested (aka you are delivering too many asks to your readers).

   3. Some plots of land are small but produce extremely valuable crops (aka highly engaged customers likely to spend money).

   4. While others are producing more commoditized, less valuable crops (aka customers that are less likely to spend money on you from “colder audiences”).

   5. The best email list of readers is one that is…

      1. On a large plot of land (aka lots of readers)

      2. Producing extremely valuable crops (readers convert at a high rate to purchase)

      3. With land that has been nurtured properly (aka you aren’t selling to your readers in every email… but you also are ensuring you use your list to regularly sell your stories and other products).

2. Your newsletter platform is the tractors, fertilizers, and other equipment you use to create value from your land. The key tools that an email newsletter platform can provide you to grow your revenue are:

   1. Reliable and high email deliverability rate (aka your emails make it to the inbox of your readers). Most major service providers accomplish this goal and are near-parity, but this is a massive red flag if you see reports of low delivery rates from other creatives online.

   2. Automated email sequences that allow you to nurture and sell your readers on auto-pilot.

      1. Automations help you build trust with readers, warm them up on auto-pilot, and generate a steady stream of sales in the background.

      2. What kind of triggers will you be using (aka actions that make an automation run) and what ones does your newsletter platform have available?

      3. Note: the most important automation sequence is your welcome sequence for new readers onto your list… first impressions are everything!

   3. Email analytics and segmenting of your readers.

      1. You need to know what links are being clicked on, what email headers drive the highest open rates, and which readers are most and least engaged.

      2. Segments are essential for bucketing your readers into interest groups based on engagement or newsletter sign-up method and ensuring you send them the most relevant information.

   4. Design and customization.

      1. Why make your “land” look like everyone else’s?

      2. Everything from ensuring your email domain is customized to easy-to-create templates is essential here.

   5. Growth and monetization.

      1. For many, this is the most important category. How does your newsletter list integrate with Facebook’s Conversion API and other tools to help you easily grow your list using other platforms? Think Zapier, embedded forms into websites, etc.

      2. What features exist native to your newsletter platform to help you grow (recommendations, algorithmic discovery, etc.)?

      3. Does your newsletter platform make it easy to see which readers have purchased your products so you can upsell them and potentially make money directly within your newsletter platform?

Now, hopefully, you have something more valuable than my personal advice on newsletter platforms but a framework to help you evaluate and make the most of newsletter platforms in 2025 and long into the future.

I could easily write a 3,000-word essay on making the most of your newsletter to grow your revenue and readership as an author… but we will have to save that for a future edition of the Author Sidekick.

Reminder, if an author friend sent you this article you can subscribe for free and get weekly emails from me below 👇

But with that said, let’s get into the tea of the article.

Here are my recommendations for the top 5 Newsletter Platforms for Authors of 2025.

Note: all of the following are my personal opinions through years of experience and endless hours of research. You are allowed to disagree with me, and I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments 😏.

MailerLite

MailerLite has been one of the more popular newsletter platforms for authors for the better part of a decade.

Personally, I first started using it 7 years ago and have sent hundreds of emails using it since.

Who it is best for: authors who want a relatively simple, reliable newsletter experience at an affordable price point.

There is even a free plan with nearly all the essential features available for up to 1,000 newsletter subscribers.

Most of the time, if someone is getting started with newsletters as an author I recommend them to MailerLite.

Here’s a screenshot from Author Sidekick inside of MailerLite’s Dashboard

The great features:

• Simple and easy to use. MailerLite has a quick learning curve. Normal email blasts to existing readers are sent using the Campaigns tab. You can export and view/manage all subscribers on the Subscribers tab. Forms can be created to allow new readers to sign-up to your newsletter. It covers all the bases! They even have a BookFunnel integration to make delivering ebooks/audiobooks to your MailerLite subscribers easy peasy.

• Create a basic author site for free. This is one of the benefits I love of MailerLite. For free you can make a basic author site that can share your work with readers and allow them to sign-up for your newsletter. You can even display an archive of old newsletter posts right on the site. The one downside is that on the free plan, you are unable to have your own custom domain for the site.

• Trigger-based automations for welcome emails and more. I love automations. I can write a separate 3,000+ word essay just on automations (please comment if you want me to do this!). MailerLite makes it easy to set up key automations based on a variety of steps in the Reader Journey including when subscribers join a group (NOT a segment), when someone clicks a link inside of an email (great for retargeting campaigns), and even it’s own set of e-commerce integrations if you connect an online store.

  

  These are some of the trigger options available for automations on MailerLite. Most email platforms (except for Substack which is lacking in most automations) have similar options here.

• Create new groups & segments with ease. This is a key feature MailerLite makes easy, however, different newsletter platforms refer to groups and segments differently. On MailerLite Groups bring together subscribers based on their interests. Typically, I add subscribers to lists based on the genre or type of product they are interested in. Segments bring together subscribers based on their behavior. I may have a segment for customers who clicked on a particular link in an email, customers who frequently open my emails, customers who don’t open my emails (for sending re-engagement sequences), and more. MailerLite allows you to send email campaigns to Groups and Segments as well as exclude any Group or Segment from a campaign.

The bad features:

• Limited growth features native to the platform. Unlike other newsletter platforms (which we will discuss) MailerLite does not have any native programs that allow customers to get rewards when they refer new readers to you, or recommendations with other creators in their network. In short, MailerLite has very limited features when it comes to helping you grow your audience.

• Their support response times are slow for anyone on the Growing Business and Free plans. In the past, if I had a major issue or question that was time-sensitive, I have upgraded to Advanced for one month and then moved back down to Growing Business immediately. Then, typically MailerLite support would resolve my issue within 30 minutes.

Pricing: Overall, MailerLite is one of the most (if not the most) affordable options for authors getting started with newsletters and maintains a reasonable price point even as your audience scales.

Out of the three pricing tiers available, I’d start with the free option, and then upgrade to Growing Business as your newsletter list grows.

They try to make it seem like Advanced is the “Best Value”. Spolier Alert: it’s the best value for MailerLite… not for you. The key features that the Advanced option provides to you over Growing Business are simply not worth it for 95%+ of authors.

If you are in the camp where advanced automations, enhanced sending times, or running a ton of Facebook Lead ads becomes integral to your business, the the Advanced Plan is for you.

Likewise, I strongly recommend paying for the monthly plan (if you are not on the free plan). You get just a 10% discount on the annual plan but are stuck paying for a year out-of-pocket upfront. That 10% discount is just not worth the flexibility that being able to switch platforms any month buys you.

You can sign up for MailerLite here [note: this is an affiliate link, but using it helps support this publication]

Beehiiv

Beehiiv is the “hot” newsletter platform that has quickly become one of the best choices for any writer online looking to grow their business.

Who it is best for: Beehiiv is by far best for any newsletter writers who plan to turn their newsletter into a business with sponsors as a revenue stream. It also serves as a great fit for authors serious about utilizing their advanced website building and growth features. Beehiiv is free up to 2,500 subscribers (but lacks automation features on this plan), and to get access to automations you have to pay a minimum of $39/month (which makes it less friendly pricing-wise compared to other platforms for beginner writers).

The great features:

• The Beehiiv team is rapidly iterating the platform. They are progressing faster than any of the other newsletter platforms on this list and are led by an amazing CEO in Tyler Denk (I met him at a tech conference once, he’s the real deal). Out of all newsletter platforms, I believe in their future the most – however, just because I’m excited about a platform’s development does not mean it’s the right fit for you today.

• More robust monetization features than any other platform with strong growth features to match. Beehiiv has built-in reader referral programs to help you grow faster organically, Boosts which allow you to pay a creator to be recommended to their newsletter list and accept payment from other creators to be recommended to yours, and an Advertising Network that allows you to accept sponsorships from brands and be paid to send email newsletters to your audience.

• Advanced analytics. Detailed post and subscriber reports are available through Beehiiv’s 3D analytics.

  

• Powerful website builder. Beehiiv acquired Typedream and has invested a ton in the past 12 months to make their website builder more robust. For newsletter publications, it’s a no-brainer. But their website is no substitute for Shopify or a direct-sales platform.

• Strong usability. The dashboard is intuitive and robust. I have less familiarity with Beehiiv compared to other options on this list, but I have plenty of friends who rave about how easy it was to use compared to their old newsletter lists (one of my friends even built a software tool specifically for Beehiiv newsletters, but that’s a story for another day).

• Community and education. Beehiiv makes a huge effort to invest in their education through their blog, Slack Group, and more.

The bad features:

• Can be overwhelming for beginners. Beehiiv is extremely powerful for newsletter writers making newsletters their primary business. For beginners or folks who only have newsletters as a part of their business, a lot of the advanced features aren't all that useful. However, for someone looking for an ultra-powerful platform, Beehiiv covers almost all the bases.

• Many advanced features are only available on relatively expensive plans. To remove Beehiiv branding it costs a minimum of $86/month on their Max plan. Likewise, advanced analytics, growth features, and more are available only to people on paid plans starting at a minimum of $39/month. This makes a lot of the power of Beehiiv at a higher price point than other newsletter platforms.

The pricing: If you want to try Beehiiv out, the free plan will get you by. However, essential features such as Email Automations only are available on the Scale plan ($39/month) and higher which I see as a major downside for people just getting started looking to use Beehiiv.

My verdict is that if you want to try Beehiiv out, creating an account and checking out their free plan can’t hurt. Beehiiv’s platform is quite powerful and if you are looking to monetize your newsletter through ads and make newsletter content core to your business, this platform is a really strong choice.

For most authors, I’m not convinced this is the best choice to start out, but can be really good for people sending out regular newsletters and is a platform that everyone should be aware of.

If you want to join Beehiiv you can get one free month and 20% off for 3 months here [note: this is an affiliate link].

Klaviyo

Klaviyo is the newsletter platform optimized for e-commerce, especially authors who have a Shopify store (in fact Shopify invested $100 million into Klaviyo back in 2022).

Who is it best for: any author with a Shopify store making a couple hundred dollars a month or more should seriously consider using Klaviyo. For folks not as focused on direct sales, Klaviyo can still have some benefits, but its advanced features and higher price tag will principally benefit those who can turn those powerful features into cash right away.

The great features:

• Wildly good segmentation. Klaviyo has near-endless segmentation options to help you target the right readers with the right campaign and automation at the right time. With integrations right into your e-commerce store, it captures all of the data you have about your customers and helps you promote your backlist, supercharge new releases, and more.

• Advanced e-commerce analytics. This included benchmarking your performance to other similar brands, detailed insights on engagement rates with your emails,

• Powerful automations and retargeting. This includes abandoned cart recovery, re-engagement sequences, and more.

• SMS + email. In addition to email, Klaviyo allows you to send text messages to customers. This costs more but can be very useful when you have a big product launch you want to send to a targeted group of customers.

• Predictive insights on reader behavior. Klaviyo can predict the lifetime value of your reader so that you can create campaigns and automations targeted to a customer’s willingness to pay.

The bad features:

• Can be more complex for people getting started. Klaviyo is by far the most powerful newsletter platform for driving commerce on this list. The downside is that for someone just getting started with newsletters, these advanced features are often a lot to digest.

• Limited growth features. Klaviyo has a ton of integrations that make it easy for big e-commerce brands to have Klaviyo deeply embedded in their marketing. For most authors, these integrations matter less and their lack of native growth features (recommendations & referrals) makes it less desirable for authors looking to have their newsletter grow their customer base.

• More geared towards e-commerce. Klaviyo is nearly a no-brainer if you have a Shopify store generating significant revenue to help you grow even faster. However, if you are not utilizing direct sales, much of the advanced segmentation, automations, and predictive analytics will not be all that useful.

The pricing: Klaviyo’s free plan is good for authors just getting started with direct sales and who have under 250 active subscribers. Its paid plans are more expensive than alternatives like MailerLite, but if you have a list of warm customers you are looking to sell books to on your direct store, the increased price tag will likely be more than worth it.

If your customers on Klaviyo are just readers interacting with your direct store, it should be possible to keep your active profiles under 250 (thus remaining on the free plan) until you are generating sufficient revenue from your direct store (likely $100+ a month) to justify the paid Klaviyo plan.

In this situation, you’d likely use another newsletter platform in this article for your general reader list (those who aren’t just buying & interacting with your direct store).

That’s right you can mix and match different newsletter platforms to suit your needs.

At the end of this article, I even share the *4* different newsletter platforms I use to run my business.

Now, if you want to join Klaviyo, you can do so here [note: this is NOT an affiliate link].

Substack

Substack is a newsletter platform & social app geared towards writers, podcasters, and other content creators.

It has gained a lot of popularity in the last few years and has a few unique draw backs and advantages. It truly stands apart from the other newsletter platforms covered in this article which makes it a great fit for some and a poor fit for others (at a structural level, which I’ll cover below).

Who it is best for: Substack is best for journalists, nonfiction writers, and other creators who can benefit from Substack’s robust growth features. Substack is principally a network filled with millions upon millions of nonfiction and news writers but also has a growing fiction community.

It is also an ideal option for writers who want to use their newsletter with over 1,000+ subscribers for free and don’t mind foregoing automation features and other crucial marketing features.

For most fiction authors, I don’t recommend using Substack since it lacks most automation features outside of a single welcome email and has limited segmenting and grouping of your readers.

The best features:

• Recommendations and referrals. Substack allows writers to recommend other newsletters after readers sign up for theirs (think of this as cross-promotion) as well as set up rewards when readers share their newsletter with others. Hint: You can get one free month to Author Sidekick Plus just by inviting one author friend to this newsletter. Pretty cool 😎!

• Notes and network. Substack has a social component to their newsletter platform that allows you to share Notes and grow your audience

• Other media formats. Substack makes it easy to post videos, podcasts, and livestreams. For most authors reading this, I have a feeling this won’t be a major benefit. But for those of you who do create content in these mediums often, this could be a nice plus for you.

• Maybe the easiest to use of all. Substack is dead simple. The dashboard makes it super easy to post. I’ll bet within 5 minutes you can learn your way around the platform and understand a decent bit of the features.

• Free to use with unlimited subscribers. This is a really big plus for a lot of people. Substack seriously doesn’t charge any fees to send out emails to subscribers, no matter how many you have. They do charge a 10% fee on revenue you generate on the platform. AND… this pricing model does come with more downsides than the other newsletter platforms.

The bad features:

• Limited automation outside of welcome emails. Outside of a welcome email for paid members and one for free subscribers, automations are not available on Substack.

• Site customization is poor. Your main Substack site can group articles and you can customize the domain and branding. But it is difficult to create sign-up forms for lead generation through ads or other means (you can do this elsewhere and then manually import your subscribers into Substack).

• Emails come from the Substack domain, not yours. Instead of coming from your domain, each email comes from your email at Substack’s website (i.e. authorsidekick@substack.com). In addition, every Substack email is customizable but also includes Substack’s branding in the footer of each post.

• You are the merchant of record and are liable for sales taxes. If you do decide to monetize on Substack (they only allow paid memberships) you then are the Merchant of Record and if you hit economic nexus (typically this requires making tens of thousands of dollars or more in a year) liable to file and remit sales tax.

• No grouping or segmenting of subscribers. You are unable to group subscribers by interest or segment by behavior. You just have paid members, founding paid members (optional), and free subscribers. This limits your ability to upsell folks as well as create campaigns targeted to specific groups of your readers.

Pricing: Substack’s pricing is the most simple yet! They take a flat 10% fee from any revenue you generate on the platform (plus, Stripe takes it’s own payment processing fee). This means if you don’t plan on making money on Substack, you can theoretically use the platform’s features entirely for free.

Of course, their pricing is hard to beat, but it has a few downsides.

If you end up generating a lot of revenue on the platform, their fees can end up being quite hefty. With my paid subscriptions for this newsletter annualized, I pay roughly $8 per month to Substack with the revenue I’ve generated on the platform with 350 free subscribers on the platform (huge thank you to all my Sidekick Plus members, you all are awesome).

Not so subtle plug… you can join Sidekick Plus between now and end of February for 20% off and get access to monthly workshops from me to help you grow your readership and revenue 😊.

Of course, with that 10% fee comes the promise of growth, which for me in my early days has certainly proven to be true – and depending on the niche you write in (especially for many journalists) it can be worthwhile.

However, that simple 10% fee for all revenue on the platform comes at another cost: lack of automation and segmenting/grouping features.

This is not due to a lack of caring or neglect amongst Substack’s team. It simply has to do with their business model.

In the past, I have been heavily involved in architecting email systems myself, and marketing emails typically cost 3x to 5x more to send per email than transactional emails.

Email servers have different rules for what counts as transactional emails versus marketing emails, and a lot of the more robust marketing features other platforms have (which also come with a price tag) Substack lacks because it would increase their cost-basis by 3x to 5x, making their business model untenable.

If you want to join Substack, you can do so here [this is NOT an affiliate link].

Kit (formerly ConvertKit)

Kit, which was originally built for bloggers, is now geared toward creators of all kinds and is especially popular among education creators, nonfiction writers, and quite a few fiction authors too!

Who it is best for: Kit is a really solid option for authors and my personal second choice for new authors after MailerLite. With Kit’s recent upgrade to their free plan now allowing up to 10,000 emails, it may soon be my #1 choice for new authors.

The good features:

• Great team focused on authors and creators. Kit was founded by Nathan Barry, originally a blogger. The team creates great content for creatives and focuses entirely on serving digital creators.

• 10,000 subscriber free plan with up to one automation. This is a huge benefit. For most authors, Kit is a viable newsletter option for free for up to 10,000 subscribers (having that automation available is key!).

• Organic and paid recommendations. Kit allows other creators on Kit to recommend your newsletter organically, or you can be paid to be recommended by them. Likewise, you can share other creators with your readers for free or get paid to do so.

• Kit’s growing app network. Kit has a growing app network to help you run your business on the platform. It’s early days for the network, but it will be interesting to see where this goes.

• Sponsorships. As your newsletter grows, you can accept brand sponsorships where companies pay you to advertise them in your newsletter. Not too bad!

• Powerful segmenting and automations. Kit has pretty much all of the core automations an author could want to use along with groups and segments you can create for your readers and make rules + forms to automatically add readers to.

The bad features:

I tried to find something constructive about Kit, but I just can’t. 🤷

It’s a powerful platform with nearly every feature an author needs at a reasonable price. It won’t be right for every author (that’s why I shared many options in this article), but its 10,000 subscriber free plan is really hard to turn down.

I personally still use MailerLite over Kit, but a lot of that has to do with my deep familiarity with MailerLite. If I was starting over, I may very well choose Kit over MailerLite. And in the future, I may switch to Beehiiv or ConvertKit over MailerLite.

Pricing: Kit has a very generous free plan of up to 10,000 free subscribers with one automation allowed. This is pretty cool!

In general, it is slightly more expensive than MailerLite. At a smaller scale (a couple thousand subscribers) it is 2x to 3x more expensive than MailerLite. But as your subscribers grow, its price differential quickly levels out.

Generally, at 10,000 subscribers and above, Kit is about 25% more expensive than MailerLite (and about the same price as Beehiiv). This is what 20,000 subscribers costs you on Kit.

Meanwhile, on MailerLite, that same number of subscribers costs $139 a month.

$40 a month extra for Kit is not a small difference – but if Kit’s extra growth and monetization features make up for it for you, then that’s a small investment.

One thing to note is that Kit’s reader referral program (when your readers can share your newsletter and get rewards when they invite new readers) is only available on the Creator Pro tier of Kit (MailerLite does not have this feature available at all).

Meanwhile, Beehiiv has the reader referall program available on their Scale plan (which is 33%+ cheaper than Kit’s Creator Pro tier).

If you’d like to join Kit, you can do so here [note: this is NOT an affiliate link].

Brevo (bonus!)

Now as a quick bonus I want to share a newsletter platform that I use and could be a great fit for many as part of their workflows.

Brevo is similar to MailerLite in terms of its features. It has automation, lists & segments (lists are the equivalent of groups in MailerLite), and the ability to create landing pages (similar to sites in MailerLite).

Now as you can tell from the dashboard, it looks a little different than MailerLite. It has Deals, Conversations, Meetings, Calls… all this weird stuff that you almost certainly will not be using as an author.

So why am I including Brevo in this recommendation list for authors when there are literally hundreds of newsletter platforms?

Brevo has something special about it.

Unlike other newsletter platforms that charge you based on the number of subscribers you have (Brevo calls subscribers contacts), Brevo charges you based on the number of emails you send.

This means that if you are only sending one email a month to a list with a lot of contacts, Brevo can be remarkably cheaper than alternatives.

For authors with massive lists garnered through swaps or Facebook Ads that they don’t email regularly, you can actually save money by using Brevo.

Here’s how the pricing checks out. If you pay for 20,000 or more monthly email sends, you can have unlimited contacts inside your Brevo account.

For MailerLite, here’s what 20,000 subscribers cost you per month:

And here’s what 20,000 emails a month with unlimited contacts costs you at Brevo:

Pretty big difference! But it gets even more dramatic. At 60,000 subscribers MailerLite costs $360 per month where as Brevo costs just $99 for 60,000 email sends.

Importantly, you will only save money on Brevo over MailerLite and most other newsletter platforms if you send one or two emails a month at MOST to your readers AND have a large list. It also should be noted that it costs an additional $12/month to remove Brevo branding.

This is MailerLite’s pricing for 60,000 subscribers. The Growing Business plan is not available after 50,000 subscribers.

This is Brevo’s pricing for 60,000 emails sent per month

For many authors, Brevo will not be a viable option. But from experience, I know many authors with large lists that email only when they have a new release, or very infrequently. If that’s you or someone you know, Brevo may be a good option.

You can create an account on Brevo here [note: this is NOT an affiliate link].

So what do I use for my newsletter?

I actually use *multiple* newsletter platforms. This won’t be the solution for everyone… but I treat my email list like the most important people in the world and use different tools depending on the step in the reader journey, what I’m sharing with my audience, and which segment of my readership I am contacting.

1. MailerLite: is used as the home for all education programs I run through the Beyond the Book Academy, as well as the waitlist for Reader Meter (the platform that helps you see where readers stop turning the page in your stories). Mailerlite has great automation tools available, the ability to interact with the platform I will be hosting the Beyond the Book Accelerator and Mastermind, and is a place where I engage with the authors who typically have shown the most interest in my work. If someone unsubscribes here, they stop receiving emails from the Beyond the Book Academy and any waitlists I host on Mailerlite.

2. Brevo: I use this to send automated sequences to new audience members acquired through Facebook Ads, affiliates, and other inorganic growth methods. Brevo is great because I can have an unlimited number of contacts there without any extra cost, making welcome sequences to new members cost-effective. If I send a lot of emails in a month I pay more, but if I send less the next month I pay less without having to remove people from Brevo. Since I’m only sending emails in one sequence from Brevo to new audience members, if someone unsubscribes there, I won’t move them over to Substack (where you are reading this). The only downside to Brevo is having to manually import members over to Substack, but I do this once a day and it takes less than 5 minutes. The benefits of having more customizable sign-up forms, Facebook Connected API integration, delivery of freebies upon initial sign-up, and automation sequences make these 5 minutes more than worth it.

3. Substack: I use this for my general weekly newsletter as well as notifications about new podcast episodes. This is where my “casual” audience lives. Substack’s main benefit is it’s growth features. Lots of writers use Substack, so for a publication like Author Sidekick, there’s a lot of upside being here. Substack’s growth features may have less benefit if you are writing fiction, or reaching an audience not already active on Substack. But my target audience made utilizing the growth features of Substack a no-brainer.

4. In the future I will use Klaviyo: Klaviyo is a great platform for e-commerce. If you have a Shopify store or other direct sales store, it is quite a powerful option. I am using Klaviyo for customers of Author Decks (physical “superpowrer” cards that help authors learn more about marketing and storytelling), a fun project you will hear more about at the end of the month that I’m collaborating with the amazing David Viergutz (he’s a multi-seven-figure-earning horror author). Klaviyo will be great for ensuring customers receive automated sequences around leaving reviews, ensuring deliveries come on time, and sharing with them future releases from Author Decks.

5. In the future I will use AWS Simple Email Service: this was NOT listed here, since I doubt it will be useful for 99% authors reading. AWS Simple Email Service makes it easy to send out transactional emails (aka not marketing emails) to customers. I will be using this for authors and readers of Reader Meter for the notification system of the platform. The bonus of something like AWS SES is that it is remarkably cheap to send transactional emails. Thus with all of the authors and readers using Reader Meter at scale, it keeps things cost-effective and allows me to offer access to Reader Meter to authors at an affordable lifetime fee.

6. Each month, I back up all subscribed emails across all these services into a secure, centralized database so that I always have access to my customer list across all platforms.

And that’s my full newsletter platform stack breakdown. This was a lot more transparent than I thought I was going to be in this newsletter, but in truth… the answer for you might not be a single platform, but utilizing multiple. At least, that’s what the answer was for me 😅.

That’s it for this one! I’ll be back Wednesday with a new episode of the Beyond the Book podcast.

In the meantime, don’t forget…

Together we are boundless,

Michael Evans

The Author Sidekick

P.S. In June, the first cohort of the Beyond the Book Accelerator opens. It helps you grow your readership and revenue beyond books to turn your stories into an empire. You can join the waitlist here.

P.P.S. Normally, I publish articles on the Author Sidekick on Mondays, but this one took me a lot longer to finish than I anticipated. I spent an extra day to make sure I could share as in-depth a review as possible. I’ll see you all next Monday (or maybe Tuesday if my perfectionist self decides I need an extra day 😆).