Newslettr A KitHold Service Running a List? Sign In

Email Newsletters

Your own newsletter, sent like a pro.

Newslettr lets a website run its own email newsletter instead of renting one. The readers, the issues and every link stay on the site. One shared sender handles the hard part: delivery, bounces, spam complaints and honest numbers about who actually read it.

See How It Works How It's Built
One issue's report for a local weekly: 52.9% opened by people, 14.6% clicked, 0.7% unsubscribed, no bounces or spam, then the full counts

Who It's For

For a site that wants its list back.

Newsletter platforms rent you your own readers: their domain in every link, their fees as the list grows, and their numbers you can't check. Newslettr lives inside the site instead. The owner writes issues where they already work, and the list never leaves home.

  1. 01

    Write It on Your Site

    Each site keeps its own issue builder and its own email design, so a newsletter looks like the business that sends it.

  2. 02

    Test, Then Schedule

    A test goes only to the owner's addresses, marked TEST. The real send needs the word SEND typed out, then goes at the publication's set time.

  3. 03

    Sent Carefully

    New readers get a small first slice and a pause. Any spike in bounces or spam complaints stops the send by itself, before a mail provider has to.

  4. 04

    Numbers You Can Trust

    Opens by people are counted apart from Apple's privacy prefetch, clicks leave out link scanners, and every report shows when and how people read.

Real Screens

What the owner sees.

Newslettr's own admin, running a made-up local weekly with 1,240 readers. Every send here went through the real sending code into a test sink, so nobody was mailed.

The send page: the sending service and its daily quota, a test send to two owner addresses, a Schedule Send button that needs SEND typed, and four past issues with their open and click rates

One Page to Send

The connected sender and its limits, a test send, the scheduled send, and every past issue with its numbers. Sending to the whole list always takes a deliberate step.

Issues week over week: a bar chart of opens by people climbing from 44% to 53% across four October issues, and a table with Apple privacy opens, clicks, click-to-open and unsubscribes

Week Over Week

Each issue against the last. The headline rate is people only; the rate with Apple's privacy opens sits beside it, so neither number hides the other.

When people opened, hour by hour after an issue went out, with most opens in the first six hours, plus the mail apps and devices readers used

When and How They Read

The hours after an issue goes out, and the mail apps and devices people used. It's how a weekly finds its best send time.

How It's Built

Built in a week to replace a platform, then shared.

I wrote Newslettr for a local newsletter that wanted off a hosted platform before its first issue, about a week away. It worked, so I pulled it into one core that now runs six newsletters, each keeping its own readers and look. This site is the shared sender behind them.

  • PHP 8
  • MySQL
  • Amazon SES
  • Resend
  • AWS Signature V4
  • SQS
  • Playwright
  • GitHub Actions
  • DreamHost

One Key, Many Senders

The sending keys live only here. A site asks this service to send for it, and every request is checked first: the site's own domain, its own settings, one reader at a time. Setup calls are refused outright. A site can't send as anyone else, even with its own token.

Bounces Help Everyone

A hard bounce on one newsletter stops every newsletter from mailing that address again; a spam complaint stops the one it was about. The shared list stores fingerprints of addresses, never the addresses themselves.

Safe to Run Twice

Every reader in a send is its own row, claimed before it goes out. A crashed run never mails anyone twice, and a reader whose fate is unknown is never resent automatically.

Honest Opens

Apple Mail opens every message for privacy, and link scanners click everything. Newslettr tells those apart from people, so a 66% open rate that's really 53% says 53%.

Subject Tests That Know Chance

An issue can carry two subject lines. The report says which one more people opened, and says "too close to call" when the gap could be luck.

No Drift, No Dependencies

Each site carries an identical copy of the core, checked by a lock file in every deploy, and 650 automated checks across 13 suites gate each change. No SDKs: AWS is called with hand-signed requests.

In Production

Newsletters on Newslettr

Running a List?

Sign In on Your Own Site

Every newsletter is run from its own site's admin, under the login you already use there. Find the Newsletter page in your admin menu. This service has no separate login and holds no reader's address.

Want Newslettr for your site? Get in touch through KitHold.