Writing a newsletter is an essential tool to growing your online audience. While it may sound like a fairly straightforward process, it can be difficult to make sure your newsletter reaches your readers.
Luckily, we have technology on our side to help us with this step. These email newsletter tools make it easy for writers to send newsletters to their audience.
1. Substack
Substack is the go-to place for authors and writers that want to send email subscription newsletters. No matter what you want to write about, Substack welcomes writers from a wide variety of genres such as politics, technology, and even finance.
Substack prioritizes ease of use while promising to help you get paid doing what you love.
In addition to providing you the tools you need to publish email newsletters, Substack has special features that help you build and maintain your audience. The tool also has tools to help you get paid for your email subscriptions.
It's easy to set up paid subscriptions. All you need to do is connect to your bank account and decide the price you want to charge.
If you want your newsletters archived in a single place, Substack will give you your own blog style website. You can also interact and build relationships with your readers via community features and discussion threads on your Substack website.
There's also a handy analytics feature, so you can track how your posts are performing. Best of all, each of these features are free. Substack only takes a cut of your earnings when you start charging your subscribers to read your content.
2. Ghost
Ghost has one goal—to make it as easy as possible for authors to create and distribute a professional email newsletter.
Ghost gives you the tools to publish both email newsletters and website posts that are completely customizable with a rich text editor that supports both HTML and embedded content.
Email and post analytics will help you see how your content is performing by tracking details, such as how many people have received and opened your emails.
You don't need to spend time digging into the details when setting up your website, Ghost comes with in-built SEO and social sharing capabilities that will boost your traffic and bring more readers to your page.
Ghost bills you monthly depending on the features you need and how many readers you have. That means they don't take any of your subscription earnings, all the money you make from your subscription is yours.
3. Buttondown
Buttondown is an email newsletter tool with a minimalist interface, making it easy for you to focus on what you are writing. It focuses on speed and simplicity, so you can get your newsletter to your readers as quickly as possible.
The tool acts like your personal editorial assistant, taking the hard admin work out of writing by checking for typos and broken links. The portable subscription widget means you can collect email subscribers from your own personal website.
Detailed analytics give you insights into how your newsletter is doing and what content is performing well to help you send better emails.
Buttondown is free for your first 1000 subscribers, after which you will be charged $5 for each additional 1000. There are also extra professional features available for a monthly subscription price. Like Ghost, Buttondown does not take a cut of your subscription revenue-everything you earn from your readers stays in your pocket.
4. MailerLite
MailerLite combines the best of email newsletter tools and email marketing.
Using the email creation tool, you can design great-looking emails using HTML, rich-text, drag and drop capability, and pre-designed templates. A rich suite of marketing tools that include a website, pop-ups, and landing pages will help you grow your audience.
Using analytics, you can learn about your subscribers' behavior and optimize your content to increase subscriptions. Sending personalized emails to subscribers with advanced targeting features is easy to set up and can be automated.
MailerLite is free to use, with premium plans available for a monthly subscription price based on the number of subscribers and features you want. There is also an additional payment feature that allows you to sell individual written content through your website for a one-time purchase.
5. Revue
Revue is a newsletter tool that makes it simple for writers and publishers to send email newsletters. The email editor has a simple interface and offers extensive formatting options and embedding capabilities.
If building a relationship with your readers is a priority, extensive subscriber management tools will help you manage your subscribers. Other subscriber feedback tools will allow your subscribers to reach out to you with valuable feedback.
Social sharing tools will give your newsletters a social media readership boost, and engagement insights will help you see how your content is performing with engagement statistics and insights.
Alongside the features that make sending email newsletters easy, you get your own custom URL to publish them on. Signing up for Revue is free, including all its features. If you begin charging your subscribers for your newsletter, Revue takes a 5% cut.
6. EmailOctopus
EmailOctopus helps writers grow their audience with a simple and intuitive tool.
Sending beautiful emails is easy with pre-designed templates, but if you have a little extra time you can design your own templates with the drag and drop editor, or import your own HTML templates. Your emails are designed to display on both email and mobile, so they look great no matter where your readers open them.
Analytics help you track important data such as whether your subscribers open your email, and data insights allows you to tailor messages to specific readers.
EmailOctopus is free with limited features, with increasing price tiers depending on how many subscribers you want alongside extra features.
Which Email Newsletter Tool Is Right for You?
Each of these email newsletter tools has different advantages, depending on which features you prioritize. It's important to decide if you can use a simpler interface, or whether you need all the bells and whistles.
Perhaps the most important thing to consider are the different pricing structures, where you decide whether to pay for a monthly subscription or how many subscribers you have.