Hi there,

Here is the latest update from the Pombo Newsletter!
Where I live, schools start mid-September, so I am still struggling to find time for my side projects, including Pombo. But I still made a few improvements recently.
 
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Hi there,

This is Greg with an update about the Pombo Newsletter tool.
I announced that I had started working on this tool almost a month ago. Time flies, and since it is summer break, my kids are at home, and we are out having fun a lot, I didn't have much time to get things done, but I still made some progress.
Pombo is now a fully functional newsletter tool. You can sign up and try it for free for three months on the Starter plan.

Here are the things I worked on the past couple of weeks:

Payments
I finalized the initial pricing and integrated Lemon Squeezy to process the payments. This took longer than a Stripe integration would've because I have a more experience with Stripe, but Lemon Squeezy handles taxes too, so it will save me headaches in the future, and I wanted to give them a try anyway. The integration wasn't too complex, by the way.

Custom sender details
Now you can set a custom name and email address to send your newsletter from. Please verify the sender address by clicking the link in the email Amazon sends, and you are all set afterward. DKIM support will also be coming soon.

From next week I will focus more on putting out new features and sending out updates more often. Stay tuned!

Until next time. 

Hi,

This is the first issue of the Pombo Newsletter! 
Pombo is a newsletter platform. Think of Mailchimp but simplified: fewer features, better UX, and lower prices. 

A few months ago, I came up with the idea of starting a newsletter. I tried to find a good newsletter tool, but none of the ones I tried worked well for me. There are a few free-to-use ones but I know that when something is free, you are the product, so I ditched those options from the start. 

I have a Hey account, and I could've just used Hey World, but that doesn't track email opens, which I'd like to track. It also doesn't have the subscriber management features I'd like. 

I ended up using Buttondown, but I don't like the interface, and the pricing is also not great for my use case. 

I don't like to use Buttondown, but you know what I like? I like to code so I figured I will build a tool for myself. And if I build it, why would it be just for myself? There may be others with the same needs as me and worst case scenario, I will be the only user of the tool I built. 

That's how Pombo was born.

Now you might wonder about the name. Back in the day, messages used to be carried by pigeons, and Pombo means pigeon in Portuguese, and I thought that could work as a name.

I got an MVP done in the past couple of weeks, and I will publish regular updates about the development as a newsletter(what else? :D), subscribe if you are interested.