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Comment by kikki | Hacker News Reader

Mailchimp's pricing really doesn't seem all that outrageous to me - considering the time you state it saves

It depends on your ARPU/month. 5,000 customers at $49.99 is 1c/customer/month just for email capability.

There are some industries like Game Development where only one or two emails are sent to the entire distribution list per year.

If you're collecting emails on game announcement at month 0, and releasing at month 24, for an average Indie game at $14.99, deducting 30% platform commission, Mailchimp costs alone represent 2.1% of your net revenue per customer - pretty extreme.

It’s definitely much more manageable for a business, but as one person running a small hobby project, paying hundreds per month is nowhere near worth it. Mailchimp is probably (understandably) focusing on enterprise customers that can pay much more and for whom convenience is a bigger plus.

If your list is large enough to cost hundreds per month, is it still a hobby project? Shouldn't you be able to recoup the hosting cost with all those subscribers?

This is the real issue. If you have 10k email newsletter subscribers and are completely unable to monetize them such that they pay for your email sending, that's the real problem. What's the point of having the list at this point?

Is it really inconceivable that the author has a primary goal other than maximizing revenue?

There's a big range between maximising revenue and 'this service can't afford its administration costs'.

But yes, some people are happy to personally pay the costs for others to enjoy their services.

Fair point, but not everyone is in a for-profit business. Many non-profits have large email lists and little funds.

Non-profit doesn't mean non-revenue.

Any organization with a list that large should also be able to raise enough funds to cover the cost of hosting.

Sure non-profits can probably put hundreds of dollars a month towards mailchimp. But don't you think that some non-profits would rather put that money towards whatever their non-profit is about? I don't get what's so hard to believe about that.

It’s not hard to believe. I’m sure they’d rather put all money paid for services towards whatever their nonprofit is about. What’s your point?

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