Newsletter Platform

Part of the worlds-biggest-software-project initiative.

An AI-native, open alternative to Substack and beehiiv that gives independent writers and media teams full ownership of their audience, their revenue, and their growth stack.

Newsletter Platform is a candidate project for an end-to-end publishing system covering subscriber management, paid subscriptions, automation, analytics, and growth tooling. It targets independent journalists, creators, brand and marketing teams, and multi-property media companies who want a Substack alternative without revenue cuts or platform lock-in.

Why Newsletter Platform?

Substack takes a 10% cut of paid subscription revenue, which becomes expensive for any publication earning more than ~$390/month from subscribers.
Existing zero-cut platforms (beehiiv, Kit, Ghost) are either proprietary SaaS or — in Ghost's case — open source but lacking modern growth tooling and built-in discovery.
Apple Mail Privacy Protection has eroded open-rate reliability, yet most platforms still default to opens as their primary engagement metric instead of scroll depth, click heatmaps, or referral tracking.
Creator monetisation is fragmenting across paid subscriptions, ad networks, referral marketplaces (beehiiv Boosts), digital products (Kit), and podcasting — but no open-source platform unifies these revenue streams.
AI writing assistance, churn prediction, and ML-based segmentation are becoming differentiating features on growth platforms, leaving an open-source AI-native gap.

Key Features

Publishing & Email Delivery

Visual or Markdown-based email editor with responsive templates
Reliable SMTP delivery with DKIM/SPF/DMARC authentication
RSS-to-email automation for syndicated publishing
Mobile-responsive rendering across email clients
Unsubscribe management compliant with CAN-SPAM, GDPR, and CASL

Subscriber & Audience Management

Subscriber import, tagging, and segmentation
Conditional logic and rule-based segments
Visual workflow automation builder for sequences and triggers
Multiple paid subscription tiers
Team accounts and multi-property organisation support

Monetisation

Stripe-native paid subscriptions with zero platform revenue cut
Digital product sales alongside subscriptions
Referral programme for creator-to-creator collaboration
Multi-tier pricing with gated content per tier

Growth Infrastructure

Landing pages, signup forms, and pop-ups for lead capture
Growth analytics tracking acquisition sources
Engagement metrics beyond opens (clicks, scroll depth, referrals)
Subscriber acquisition reporting

Analytics & Insights

Open rates, click rates, and subscriber metrics
Subscriber behaviour and engagement reporting
Growth source attribution

AI-Native Advantage

The platform layers AI capabilities that incumbents lack: a writing co-pilot trained on the creator's own archive and voice to draft posts, subject lines, and hooks; dynamic paywall positioning that picks the optimal gating point per reader based on engagement history; ML-based segmentation that builds intent-based audiences from reading behaviour and referral source; and a churn prediction model that flags at-risk paid subscribers before cancellation and triggers personalised retention. A cross-newsletter recommendation engine surfaces collaboration and Boost-style opportunities based on audience overlap.

Tech Stack & Deployment

The project targets both self-hosted and managed cloud deployment, following the precedent set by Ghost. Core integrations include Stripe (and Stripe Connect) for paid subscriptions and creator payouts, standard email authentication (DKIM, SPF, DMARC) for inbox placement, and RSS/Atom for cross-platform syndication. A REST API and Markdown-native authoring path are intended for developer-friendly integration, in line with Buttondown and Ghost.

Market Context

The broader email marketing market exceeds $10 billion globally in 2026, with the independent newsletter tooling segment estimated in the hundreds of millions annually based on beehiiv's reported $30M annualised revenue in mid-2025. Substack has raised over $82M and beehiiv approximately $50M (including a $33M Series B in April 2024 led by NEA, Lightspeed, and Sapphire). Primary buyers are independent journalists and essayists, creator-economy operators bundling newsletters with courses or communities, brand and marketing teams pursuing owned-audience strategies, and media companies running multiple newsletter properties.

Project Status

This project is in the research and specification phase.
Contributions, feedback, and domain expertise are welcome.

Contributing

We welcome contributions from developers, domain experts, and potential users. See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

Important: All contributions must be your own original work or clearly attributed open-source material with a compatible licence. Copyright infringement and licence violations will not be tolerated and will result in immediate removal of the offending contribution. If you are unsure whether a piece of code, text, or other material is safe to contribute, open an issue and ask before submitting.

Licence

Licence to be determined. See discussion for context.