Just Ship It — A Newsletter Platform Built to Replace Beehiiv

Marc Lou

@marclou · 422.9K followers

• Full newsletter stack (editor, campaigns, API, deliverability reports) built in a few prompts
• Auto-cleanup cron marks dormant subs, sends a last re-engage email, then stops sending
• Runs on AWS SES + MongoDB for under $300/year instead of a projected $4,000 Beehiiv bill

“Bye bye Beehiiv 👋 I vibe-coded my own newsletter platform: 📧 Campaign management w/ editor 🖥️ Web archives (http://newsletter.marclou.com) 🔗 API support 🫧 List cleanup, deliverability reports It took a few prompts with Opus 5.5. I left Beehiiv because they raised prices for the 3rd time in 2 years. - My first yearly bill was $1,000. - My future bill would have been $4,000. Now I'm using AWS SES + MongoDB, and I will pay less than $300/year. Newsletter platforms charge per subscriber, when in fact the real cost is the number of emails sent. Subscribers will naturally become inactive, so you end up paying more for something that hurts your deliverability (sending to dormant subscribers = spam trap). So I've set a cleanup cron job for my newsletter alternative. It marks inactive subs as dormant, sends one last re-engaging email, and stops emailing them. Money saved. Deliverability increased. I also gain a priceless feature: Freedom. I can change the UI, add features, connect all my apps - anything is possible with just a prompt. I'm replacing Resend next. I love it, but it's very expensive ($400/mo)”