I.M. Lasky
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lasky.io
I.M. Lasky
@lasky.io
Korean learner, building @dailytokki.com and joyful.to
Violin, motorcycles, running
Heyo! Been building Joyful (joyful.to) as a newsletter platform that also hosts your newsletter for you on your own personal site. It's totally free to get started and happy to answer any questions about it!
Joyful
The simplest way to write, design, and send beautiful newsletters. No setup, no complexity—just start typing. Free forever with unlimited newsletters and subscribers.
joyful.to
September 24, 2025 at 8:52 AM
I get there are other platform operations and costs (I am finding them myself on Joyful) but damn. That’s still a ton of difference in their prices.

What do you think of newsletter platform prices?
September 18, 2025 at 1:22 PM
If you were to sign up with Beehiiv on their Max plan, which lets you remove their branding, 10,000 subscribers would cost you $193/month (billed annually)!

Thats CRAZY!

For Ghost and Buttondown, they are both over $100 a month for similar amount of subscribers.

Why is it so expensive?
September 18, 2025 at 1:22 PM
I've been building Joyful (joyful.to) and would love for you to give it a try and see if it could work for your needs!
Joyful
The simplest way to write, design, and send beautiful newsletters. No setup, no complexity—just start typing. Free forever with unlimited newsletters and subscribers.
joyful.to
September 16, 2025 at 1:37 PM
This means every part of the code can emit events that get saved to a queue that other aspects of the code can then ingest.

This makes it powerful to trigger automations based on anything you can think of! Link clicks, opens, sign-up dates, birthdays, etc.
September 15, 2025 at 8:48 AM
It's been actually really fun to build this part. Each aspect of the code needed to be outfitted with a publisher and subscriber system. Inspired a bit by Robot OS (ROS) which has topics and event driven structures.
September 15, 2025 at 8:48 AM
That'd be amazing, yes! Great suggestions, gives me some more to think about
September 13, 2025 at 5:30 PM
Got it! That totally makes sense. I can definitely see a way to mark a version as "published" before it is totally published. And each of these versions were sent via email + your personal site? Curious about the distribution as well.
September 13, 2025 at 5:20 PM
Oooh! That sounds interesting. Are you thinking subscribers could opt into seeing works-in-progress as they're being edited live, or more like sharing polished drafts before the final publish?
September 13, 2025 at 5:06 PM
Which platform are you moving to?
September 12, 2025 at 6:29 PM
haha what do you use to write your newsletters?
September 11, 2025 at 5:45 PM