In June we showed Volleyy (https://volleyy.com), a tool for responsive newsletters. Got us to the front page of product hunt, and a sizeable boost in our active user base. We are still working on growing :-)
4 karma · joined September 10, 2015
Contact me at noddy@nnoduka.com
Pretty impressive to teach yourself anything in a week. A newsletter will help reinforce your understanding of react, so I would do it if for nothing else but that reason.
And regarding the worth of "spending the money", I could be of some help with that. I'm a co-founder at https://volleyy.com and email newsletters is what we do. You could email me at noddy@volleyy.com to get you a demo and setup.
Our content editor looks a lot like the medium editor, and we are launching on RSS-to-email functionality this week.
Would you mind sharing what issues you seem to find in all the major platforms? And why you feel MailChimp is underfeatured?
# Volleyy Pitch
Volleyy is the tool for generating emails your subscribers love to read. We separate email content generation from aesthetics, and let you focus on getting your message across.
We've taken away the run-of-the-mill templates found in existing solutions and let you take the wheel with our (medium.com style) blogging interface.
We deliver your emails with a simple (and consistent) theme, tested for user-friendliness and ease of navigation (Get a sneak peek here: https://s3.amazonaws.com/nnoduka/volleyy.jpeg)
I only propose Django because that's what I use for creating websites with Python.
Some comments on initial signup: - Great approach to validating emails by sending an email after initially providing just that, As opposed to the classic "doing so after filling in all info". This way you get to figure out you messed up your email early in the process! I liked that.
- The confirmation email had a link to `Get started with...`. It would have been great if you also had smaller text saying "Or copy this link and paste in your browser: ...". Maybe it's just me but I get scared of clicking on links in emails without knowing where they are going to (or downloading in malicious cases)
- Would have been great to not have to go through so many screens for signup. Maybe have me provide my team name, name and password in one screen.
- The animations on the task cards and their dragging is pretty great!
Source: Was a Microsoft PM
Don't forget many great apps are built on many different languages. I think you should focus on using what you know to get your product out there as quickly as possible.
Good luck and I hope this helps :)
Regarding the lack of push notifications, I believe it works for apps like fitness and news apps. However a new messaging app like yours installed on a user's phone will need to inform said user of occasional updates as that's what we now expect of social networking products. Might not necessarily be push notifications but maybe a daily email summary would work?