When Blogger’s FollowByEmail widget went away in 2021, I wanted to help my friend Sandra Dodd who has a few blogs there.
One service that seemed an OK option that time was follow.it. We tried their free plan, but the their ads turned out to be more than unrelated to the email content, they were… disgusting! 🤢 Sorry, it’s a word I almost never use, but this is what I felt back then. Maybe their ads and offer are way better now…
Sandra is a daily blogger, and at that point I couldn’t find a free options that would allow sending 1500 per day.
After looking around some more, I said to myself: How hard can it be?! I mean I’m a Professional® software engineer since 1999, so I should be able to build such a system myself! 🤔
In November of 2021, after a few months of nights and weekends, I had the basic functions of the system working, and we moved the email subscription of Sandra blogs from follow.it to my system. At that time it had no website, just the server-side subsystems that are absolutely necessary to monitor the blog RSS and the infrastructure to send the emails.
In August 2022, I started working on the website, and by now I’ve got all the components necessary for anyone to create an account and make use of the service. 🤓
Now, I’m open to pioneer bloggers that would like to give it a try, and give candid feedback. And I’m open not only for the positive 👍 and “Well done!” but also—maybe even more—for the “it doesn’t work for me because X and Y” or “X feature is broken” or “X feature doesn’t work well for me because A and B.”
The payment system is coming up soon, after I’ll get my company’s tax ID (EIN). The IRS typically takes 25-40 business days. This will allow me to activate the Stripe account and wire up the payment system.
I have a long way ahead, so wish me luck! 😇
Thanks for reading, and see you around! 👋🙂