Built an email marketing platform after paying $230/month

In plain words

Fertit is a newsletter management platform that lets users handle subscriber management, campaign sending, and preference customization while using their own email service provider. It targets cost-conscious publishers and marketers who want to avoid expensive email platforms like Mailchimp or ConvertKit. The software reduces infrastructure complexity by handling the application layer while users supply their own SMTP service, significantly lowering total costs compared to traditional email marketing platforms.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

In the maker’s words, at launch

Spent the last month building Fertit - basically a newsletter manager but you bring your own SMTP and skip the DevOps nightmare. All the features (subscriber management, admin dashboard, custom preferences) without the infrastructure markup. The math that broke me: Mailchimp: $230/month for 15k contacts My…

• 
  Mailtrain2016 · github.com · ▲323

  Self hosted newsletter app (Mailchimp clone)

• 
  Sender2021 · sender.net · ▲297

  Super easy and affordable email marketing platform

• 
  I made a MailChimp alternative that connects to your database2023 · cc.dev · ▲302

  Hi all! Excited to share cc.dev after months of work and refinement. The idea for this product came from trying to do email marketing for my side project, CubeDesk, a site where Rubik's Cube enthusiasts can time themselves, race with one another, train algorithms — it's a fun niche! With over 40k users, sending even a single campaign was becoming expensive with MailChimp. I knew AWS SES would be much cheaper, but it’s just an API with none of the other necessities you need for a robust email marketing platform. Beyond cost, I was also frustrated with having to make sure my database was…

• 
  Polymail Web2018 · polymail.io · ▲437

  All-in-one email platform for sales communication

• 
  ConvertKit2014 · kit.com · ▲264

  Email marketing for authors

• 
  I made an open source Mailchimp RSS-to-Email alternative2024 · github.com · ▲109

  Hi all! Excited to share rss2newsletter after completing dev work for the initial release. The idea for this project came out of necessity, as I wanted to share my articles via email newsletter. I was looking for a super minimal, lightweight, and open source solution, and when none existed, I decided to create one. For any sizable number of email recipients, a popular platform like Mailchimp will easily cost you hundreds or even thousands per month in per-contact fees. rss2newsletter, on the other hand, allows you to use Amazon SES, so you can reach your audience at pennies on the dollar.…

• 
  /dev/null▲468

  a social network for devs

  Dev tools · 2d ago · dev-null.sh

• 
  Whiteboard (YC W26) – an open-source IDE for thoughtful software design▲423

  open-source IDE for thoughtful software design. Contribute to devdotfast/whiteboard development by creating an account on GitHub.

  Dev tools · 27d ago · github.com

• 
  Reladraw – A diagram language where you decide where to place things▲411

  Contribute to reladraw/reladraw development by creating an account on GitHub.

  Dev tools · 25d ago · github.com

• 
  OpenBot▲362

  Grok Bot alternative: free, local, open-source, multiplayer

  Dev tools · 22d ago · openbot.run

• 
  Talanoa▲340

  Hi HN, I’m a fullstack developer, and honestly, I’ve lost count of how many side projects I’ve worked on over the years. But one idea kept coming back to me: a different kind of email client. It first came to me in 2014: “What if we could handle emails more like conversations?” Every year, I’d revisit this concept in my “Build Notes.” Ten years later, no one had built exactly what I had in mind — so I finally decided to do it myself. That’s how Talanoa was born. I wanted something focused on people, not timelines. I was tired of marking messages as unread just to remember to reply later, or…

  Dev tools · 20d ago · talanoa.email

• 
  CoreSpeed▲332

  One MCP for everything your agents need: apps, memory, tools

  Dev tools · 27d ago · corespeed.io

• 
  Clueso▲1,300

  Create stunning product videos in minutes with AI

  AI · 2025 · clueso.io

• 
  Trickle - Magic Canvas ▲1,064

  Hey HN! Introducing Trickle Magic Canvas: the world’s first Agentic Canvas, where you can visually co-create apps and websites with AI, from idea to production. Why is a canvas better? Most AI tools today rely on linear chats or text prompts. We believe that limits creativity and clarity. Canvas changes the game. 1. Every version & page at a glance. Each page and sub-page lives on a timeline. You can quickly browse, edit, and preview progress like a living, visual document — no more digging through chat logs or scattered states. 2. The canvas is the context. Unlike linear chats, you can…

  AI · 2025 · trickle.so

• TB
  Tinder but it's only pictures of my wife and I can only swipe right▲1,030

  Life & fun · 2025 · trytender.app

• 
  Ten years of running every day, visualized▲958

  Today marks ten years, 3653 consecutive days, of running at least one mile every day under the USRSA rules [1]. To celebrate, I built an interactive dashboard that turns a decade of GPX files into charts you can explore. Running has truly changed my life: I've made lifelong friends, explored beautiful places, and more importantly invested into my own health and fitness, which I'm starting to see the positive benefits as I get older. The stack is pretty simple: a NextJS app, with a Postgres database to keep all my running data, and all the stats are pre-computed and cached in Redis, so I…

  Dev tools · 2025 · nodaysoff.run

• 
  Draw a fish and watch it swim with the others▲935

  Made this website as an exercise in vibe-coding and GCP. It was posted about a few times around the internet, on sites like Morning Brew (https://www.morningbrew.com/issues/business-buzzkill), MetaFilter (https://www.metafilter.com/209703/Draw-A-Fish), boingboing.net, etc. I think it's cute! I built a basic CNN trained against penises and swastikas, and then anything that doesn't hit the 63% confidence score gets sent to a mod queue, a vibe-coded fish-tinder…

  AI · 2025 · drawafish.com

• 
  Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act▲862

  Hi HN - I made a site that takes a UK postcode, grabs the local MP's information and generates an AI mockup of what their ID might look like. It's a small, silly protest at the stupidity of the Online Safety Act that just came into force. edit - My open AI credits got hugged to death, please use a known postcode (like one from Kier Starmer's constituency, WC2B6NH) in the meantime.

  AI · 2025 · use-their-id.com