I’m an adviser to a very similar service which started with a similar frustration. I was a customer in their earlier avatar but I asked them to rebrand recently. We continue to stick to the simplicity and minimal approach to everything from design to the processing, etc. as much as possible. The biggest hurdle is the “Bring your Own SMTP.” The team continue to help out a lot of customers just to set up their Amazon SES, map domains, etc.
Restricting on the number of contacts is kinda just made-up, so the FREE tier is generous at 5000 contacts, with 50,000 Emails/SMS sends.
Congrats on the launch. With your other tiers so cheap, I'm not sure why you marked the Enterprise tier as "call us for a chat"? Just price it at something reasonable and move on. No one wants to talk to a sales person for a $500 a month expense.
The main reason people pay expensive ESPs is deliverability, which is practically impossible when self-hosting when it comes to marketing, non-transactional emails, and in any case much more expensive than any ESP subscription.
How does Fertit position itself in relation to that?
Fertit actually leverages the best of both worlds through our SMTP integration approach:
Use Established ESPs for Delivery: Fertit connects to your existing SMTP provider (SendGrid, Mailgun, Amazon SES, etc.) - so you still get their deliverability infrastructure and IP reputation.
Save on Interface & Features: Instead of paying $50-300/month for ConvertKit or Mailchimp's full platform, you pay $5-10/month for Fertit's management layer while using a cheaper transactional email service for actual delivery.
Cost Comparison:
Traditional ESP: $79/month for 5,000 subscribers
Fertit approach: $9.99/month (Pro plan) + $15/month (SendGrid) = ~$25/month total
Deliverability is not a purely technical SMTP-level issue. It also involves domain/IP reputation, email content quality, bounce rate management, spam complaints etc etc etc. Also I'm pretty sure there is a buuuunch of compliance stuff you can't just punt to SES no? How much are you handling on your side and how much can SES do?
1. Deliverability. Email marketing providers like MailChimp charge a premium because they have highly trustworthy send addresses and IPs that email servers can trust. The BYO SMTP aspect of your product has the potential to ruin that for customers who aren't aware of those issues. I probably wouldn't be surprised if that aspect also makes it harder for you to clamp down on fraud, abuse, and spam. If you don't control the send server then you might not know everything that's going on from front to back.
2. Someone looking to save money can already find MailChimp competitors that are cheaper without the overhead of having to also hook up a second service to send the emails. For example, 15K contacts at mailerlite is $98/month. Or I could do something email send-based like Brevo and send 40,000 emails per month at $35. If I go with Brevo I don't have to bring my own email send service.
3. The LSV of an email subscriber is so high that the end result is you're going too far downmarket. Customers would benefit more from more effective campaigns with better deliverability, more powerful business logic, more integrations to other business platforms, etc. In other words, paying more is worth the investment. The LSV of an email subscriber is often somewhere between $10-50. So if you have 15,000 active contacts you are looking at revenue from those subscribe rover their lifetime as potentially being something like $150,000-$750,000. In that frame of reference, $230/month for MailChimp is a steal.
I'm just not sure who this is for. Sure, you do say it's for indie developers, but I think that target customer has the most options to use something else.
I think the Mom test would be applicable here. I worry that you built a product just for yourself that doesn't really appeal to anyone else. The main differentiators seem to be low price and splitting up the business logic from the send service, which to me is kind of like making someone buying an ice cream buy the ice cream cone next door.
I run a few instances of listmonk [0], what makes fertit different/better?
One thing I don’t particularly like about listmonk is that it doesn’t really support multitenancy. It’s lightweight enough that I can spin up multiple instances for different domains, but it’d be nice not to.
Multi-tenancy is exactly what Fertit was built to solve. But it is available only in Fertit hoster service, not the open-source version at the current moment.
Listmonk is excellent - we actually considered building on top of it initially. The main differentiators:
Multi-tenancy (your pain point):
Native support for multiple newsletters/domains in one instance
Unified management across all your properties
Positioning differences:
Listmonk: Power-user tool with SQL segmentation, advanced templating, high-throughput queues
Fertit: Simplified interface targeting small businesses who want "just works" newsletter management
Architecture approach:
Listmonk: Single binary + PostgreSQL (requires more ops knowledge)
Fertit: Docker Compose setup with Redis for caching, designed for easier deployment
Business model:
Open-source version addresses your self-hosting needs
Hosted service ($5-10/month) for users who want zero ops
When you'd choose Fertit over Listmonk:
You manage newsletters for multiple clients/domains (multi-tenancy)
You prefer simpler UI over advanced segmentation features
You want commercial support option
You're hitting operational complexity with multiple Listmonk instances
When you'd stick with Listmonk:
You need the advanced features (SQL queries, high-throughput queues)
Current multi-instance setup works fine for your scale
You prefer the mature, battle-tested codebase
Would love your thoughts on the multi-tenancy approach - is that the main friction point you're hitting with multiple instances?
Hey, thanks for feedback. While there are some screenshots in product hunt launch, I will definitely add more images and videos later to make it easier to use platform.
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/fertit
There’s definitely a difference between spam and permission-based email marketing. Fertit is built specifically for legitimate newsletter subscriptions - subscribers opt-in through proper signup forms and can easily manage preferences or unsubscribe. It’s the same model used by every legitimate business newsletter, from GitHub updates to Substack publications. The focus is on providing value to people who actually want to receive the content.
I would be willing to bet that vast majority of “subscribed” newsletters are spam.
I always receive a ton of newsletters. Never once have I signed up, I always uncheck all sign up prompts and always immediately unsubscribe if I receive one.
Even then, immediately after any sort of purchase I get resubscribed. I’m convinced that most shops completely ignore all user choices and resubscribe everyone to all mailing lists after purchase.
You’re absolutely right about this being a huge problem and it’s exactly why I built proper consent management into Fertit from the ground up. What you’re describing (auto-resubscribing after purchase, ignoring unsubscribe requests) is both illegal under CAN-SPAM/GDPR and terrible business practice.
The legitimate use case is businesses that actually respect their subscribers. Think GitHub release notes, Substack authors, or local businesses sending monthly updates to customers who genuinely want them. But you’re spot on that too many companies abuse email marketing, which ruins it for everyone.
In the end, every newsletter I ever signed up to ends up being spam. Acquisition of the company I signed up with or just change of plans: it always happen, usually within months, sometimes years, but I don't know of any cases it did not happen over the past 30 years of signing up to them.
Restricting on the number of contacts is kinda just made-up, so the FREE tier is generous at 5000 contacts, with 50,000 Emails/SMS sends.
https://sendune.com/pages/pricing
This also attracts a lot of spammers, and suspending their accounts is another routine.
How does Fertit position itself in relation to that?
Use Established ESPs for Delivery: Fertit connects to your existing SMTP provider (SendGrid, Mailgun, Amazon SES, etc.) - so you still get their deliverability infrastructure and IP reputation.
Save on Interface & Features: Instead of paying $50-300/month for ConvertKit or Mailchimp's full platform, you pay $5-10/month for Fertit's management layer while using a cheaper transactional email service for actual delivery.
Cost Comparison: Traditional ESP: $79/month for 5,000 subscribers Fertit approach: $9.99/month (Pro plan) + $15/month (SendGrid) = ~$25/month total
1. Deliverability. Email marketing providers like MailChimp charge a premium because they have highly trustworthy send addresses and IPs that email servers can trust. The BYO SMTP aspect of your product has the potential to ruin that for customers who aren't aware of those issues. I probably wouldn't be surprised if that aspect also makes it harder for you to clamp down on fraud, abuse, and spam. If you don't control the send server then you might not know everything that's going on from front to back.
2. Someone looking to save money can already find MailChimp competitors that are cheaper without the overhead of having to also hook up a second service to send the emails. For example, 15K contacts at mailerlite is $98/month. Or I could do something email send-based like Brevo and send 40,000 emails per month at $35. If I go with Brevo I don't have to bring my own email send service.
3. The LSV of an email subscriber is so high that the end result is you're going too far downmarket. Customers would benefit more from more effective campaigns with better deliverability, more powerful business logic, more integrations to other business platforms, etc. In other words, paying more is worth the investment. The LSV of an email subscriber is often somewhere between $10-50. So if you have 15,000 active contacts you are looking at revenue from those subscribe rover their lifetime as potentially being something like $150,000-$750,000. In that frame of reference, $230/month for MailChimp is a steal.
I'm just not sure who this is for. Sure, you do say it's for indie developers, but I think that target customer has the most options to use something else.
I think the Mom test would be applicable here. I worry that you built a product just for yourself that doesn't really appeal to anyone else. The main differentiators seem to be low price and splitting up the business logic from the send service, which to me is kind of like making someone buying an ice cream buy the ice cream cone next door.
One thing I don’t particularly like about listmonk is that it doesn’t really support multitenancy. It’s lightweight enough that I can spin up multiple instances for different domains, but it’d be nice not to.
https://listmonk.app/
Positioning differences: Listmonk: Power-user tool with SQL segmentation, advanced templating, high-throughput queues Fertit: Simplified interface targeting small businesses who want "just works" newsletter management
Architecture approach: Listmonk: Single binary + PostgreSQL (requires more ops knowledge) Fertit: Docker Compose setup with Redis for caching, designed for easier deployment
Business model: Open-source version addresses your self-hosting needs Hosted service ($5-10/month) for users who want zero ops
When you'd choose Fertit over Listmonk: You manage newsletters for multiple clients/domains (multi-tenancy) You prefer simpler UI over advanced segmentation features You want commercial support option You're hitting operational complexity with multiple Listmonk instances
When you'd stick with Listmonk: You need the advanced features (SQL queries, high-throughput queues) Current multi-instance setup works fine for your scale You prefer the mature, battle-tested codebase
Would love your thoughts on the multi-tenancy approach - is that the main friction point you're hitting with multiple instances?
A lot of people actually want to be sold to.
But the good ones do.
Are you confused between newsletters/marketing and actual spam maybe?
I always receive a ton of newsletters. Never once have I signed up, I always uncheck all sign up prompts and always immediately unsubscribe if I receive one.
Even then, immediately after any sort of purchase I get resubscribed. I’m convinced that most shops completely ignore all user choices and resubscribe everyone to all mailing lists after purchase.