[HN Gopher] WordPress.com launches paid newsletters
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       WordPress.com launches paid newsletters
        
       Author : marban
       Score  : 86 points
       Date   : 2023-06-01 18:28 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (wordpress.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (wordpress.com)
        
       | bwb wrote:
       | Wait until they learn about AI in 3 or 4 years :)
        
         | izzytcp wrote:
         | Enlighten me about AI please.
        
           | bwb wrote:
           | oh just a joke given how far behind the hype curve they are
           | on paid newsletters :)
        
       | tiffanyh wrote:
       | Doesn't anyone know if this functionality will come to the open
       | source version?
        
         | BrianHenryIE wrote:
         | This might be the source:
         | https://github.com/Automattic/newspack-newsletters
        
         | bogdanu wrote:
         | I think the paid content features are part of Jetpack the
         | plugin.
        
           | RobotToaster wrote:
           | As part of their proprietary SaaS though.
        
             | Kye wrote:
             | There are gobs of membership site plugins if you want to
             | run it yourself. Wordpress as a piece of software has been
             | used for this for a very long time.
        
       | elicash wrote:
       | I use ghost and have had a good experience, but more competition
       | is great.
        
       | toddmorey wrote:
       | This is such a good idea for them
        
       | very_good_man wrote:
       | If you're paying wordpress.com $300/year for all their features,
       | I can highly recommend switching to AWS Lightsail for 90%
       | savings. Exorbitant pricing.
        
         | lemonberry wrote:
         | Not sure who your comment is targeted to, but I've been working
         | with a friend's mom - 55ish - on her WordPress website. With no
         | tech experience she was able to spin up a site with a custom
         | domain and get very close to launching but got bogged down in
         | some WooCommerce details. She was also using Elementor which
         | seemed to not play nice with WordPress.com's hosting. I suspect
         | this is why Elementor now has their own hosting.
         | 
         | My point: this highly motivated but completely inexperienced
         | woman was able to build a website on her own and get very close
         | to launching.
         | 
         | I have no experience with AWS Lightsail. I'm sure it's a fine
         | platform, but to me WordPress.com is really making the web
         | accessible to a lot of people that otherwise wouldn't have
         | access. Maybe it's not worth it to many with a tech background,
         | but for her, WordPress.com is making her dreams come true.
        
           | suddenclarity wrote:
           | I haven't used Wordpress in over a decade but one major
           | selling point back then was the security. Standalone
           | installations were hacked left and right. Often because you
           | postponed updating. They sorted that for you.
        
         | moooo99 wrote:
         | One may complain about the prices for specific SaaS offerings,
         | but mentioning Lightsail as a alterantive to a completely
         | managed offer is not exactly an apples to apples comparison.
        
           | drusepth wrote:
           | Lightsail is a pretty good middleground between fully-managed
           | and fully-self-hosted, though. One of my WP blogs is on
           | Lightsail and it was <5 minutes to set up and be ready; and
           | TBH I'm pretty darn devops-challenged.
        
       | orthros wrote:
       | So this is SubStack revisited I take it
        
         | btgeekboy wrote:
         | I mean, WordPress has been around for decades. Substack came
         | along and basically made "WordPress with subscriptions" - so
         | now WP has that functionality too.
        
           | Kye wrote:
           | They've had paid subscriptions for years. All that's really
           | new in this announcement is the page templates. The
           | submission title is editorialized and inaccurate.
        
         | gtirloni wrote:
         | Is that bad?
        
       | westondeboer wrote:
       | Awesome that they are using the block editor to design the
       | newsletter.
       | 
       | 10% fees for the free plan is not to bad
        
         | wouldbecouldbe wrote:
         | The block editor is a disaster
        
       | vmsp wrote:
       | [flagged]
        
       | iBotPeaches wrote:
       | Was wondering when this might come out. Ghost doing it and having
       | such success seemed like something that would spread to
       | competitors.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | skilled wrote:
       | Does WP.com still syndicate your content across the internal
       | network? I was using it in 2012 for a blog about creative writing
       | and very quickly amassed over 2,000 followers because of the said
       | syndication.
       | 
       | I haven't touched it in years, have spammers obliterated the
       | platform?
        
         | gtirloni wrote:
         | _> I haven't touched it in years, have spammers obliterated the
         | platform?_
         | 
         | I family member uses it routinely and I haven't noticed
         | anything like that.
        
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       (page generated 2023-06-01 23:02 UTC)