Best Tech Stack for Building a Newsletter as a Solo Developer

I resisted starting a newsletter for years because I thought I needed to build something custom. A subscriber management system, email templates, analytics, the works. Then I watched a developer with a simple Buttondown setup grow to 15,000 subscribers while I was still debating my "custom newsletter platform architecture." Lesson learned.

The truth about newsletters is that the tech stack matters less than the content. But picking the right tools can save you hours per week and make the writing process painless enough that you actually stick with it. Here's the stack I'd use today.

The Recommended Stack

Why This Stack Works for Solo Developers

There are two types of newsletter operators. People who want to write a newsletter and people who want to build a newsletter platform. If you're the first type (which is most solo developers), your stack should be almost entirely managed services.

The reason is simple. Every hour you spend on infrastructure is an hour you're not spending on content. And content is the only thing that grows a newsletter. I've seen developers build custom subscriber management with PostgreSQL, self-hosted email sending with Amazon SES, and bespoke analytics dashboards. Their newsletters had 200 subscribers. Meanwhile, people using Substack with zero technical effort had 20,000.

This stack optimizes for one thing: minimizing the time between "I have an idea for this week's issue" and "the email is in people's inboxes."

Platform: Buttondown or Beehiiv

This is the most important decision, and honestly either one works great. Here's how I'd choose between them.

Buttondown is built by a solo developer, which means you get a product that respects developer workflows. It accepts Markdown and has an API, so you can automate publishing from a CI pipeline if you want. The free tier gives you your first 100 subscribers with all features. It's minimal, fast, and does exactly what you need without extra bloat. I appreciate that the UI doesn't try to upsell me every time I log in.

Beehiiv is more feature-rich out of the box. It has a built-in website, referral program, ad network, and audience segmentation. If you want to monetize your newsletter through sponsorships or paid subscriptions from day one, Beehiiv gives you those tools without integrations. The free tier supports up to 2,500 subscribers.

What about Substack? Substack is fine for writers who don't want to think about tech at all. But it takes a 10% cut of paid subscriptions, locks you into their platform aesthetics, and gives you limited control over your subscriber data. As a developer, you can do better.

What about ConvertKit (now Kit)? Good platform, but pricier than the alternatives and more geared toward creators selling courses and products. If your newsletter is a top-of-funnel for selling something, Kit is worth considering. For a standalone newsletter, it's more tool than you need.

Landing Page: Astro

Your newsletter needs a landing page. Not a complicated website, just a single page that explains what your newsletter covers, shows social proof (subscriber count, testimonials), and has a prominent signup form.

Astro is perfect for this because it generates a static site that loads instantly. Create one page, embed the signup form from your newsletter platform, and deploy to Vercel. Total development time: 2-3 hours. I'd use a simple template with Tailwind CSS and not overthink the design.

The landing page serves two purposes beyond signups. It gives you a canonical URL to share everywhere, and it's a target for SEO. "Best weekly newsletter about [your topic]" is a search query real people make. A fast, well-structured landing page can rank for those queries.

Include an archive page that links to past issues. This is free SEO. Every issue you've written becomes a page that Google can index and rank for relevant queries. Beehiiv generates this automatically. For Buttondown, you'd add links to your Astro site or use their built-in archive page.

Writing Workflow

This is where developers have an advantage. Write your newsletter in Markdown using VS Code or your favorite editor. Version control your issues with Git. This gives you a searchable archive, the ability to reference past issues, and a backup that doesn't depend on your newsletter platform.

My workflow is dead simple. I keep a newsletter/ directory in my project repo with one Markdown file per issue. I write the draft in VS Code, preview it with a Markdown plugin, and then paste it into Buttondown's editor (which accepts Markdown natively). The whole process takes maybe 10 minutes of non-writing time per issue.

If you want to go further, you can automate publishing through the Buttondown API. Push a new Markdown file to your repo, a GitHub Action sends it to Buttondown's API as a draft, and you just review and hit send. I set this up once and it's nice, but honestly, copy-pasting Markdown takes 30 seconds, so the automation is more about fun than necessity.

What I'd Skip

Self-hosted email sending. Amazon SES, Postmark, or SendGrid for sending your own newsletter emails is technically possible and cheaper at scale. But you're taking on deliverability management, IP reputation, bounce handling, unsubscribe compliance, and spam filtering. Newsletter platforms handle all of this. The $10-30/month you'd save is not worth the headache.

Custom subscriber management. Building your own subscriber database, signup forms, and email list management is reinventing a wheel that's been perfected by dozens of companies. Use the platform's tools.

Complex automation for day one. Welcome sequences and drip campaigns are nice, but don't build them before you have subscribers. Write 10 issues first. Get 500 subscribers. Then add a welcome email that links to your best 3 issues. That's enough automation for the first year.

Multi-platform distribution. Some people publish simultaneously on Substack, Medium, LinkedIn, and their own blog. This dilutes your brand and fragments your audience. Pick one primary platform, build your list there, and cross-post selectively. I'd rather have 5,000 subscribers on one platform than 1,000 scattered across five.

Paid subscriptions at launch. Grow your free list first. Prove you can write consistently. Then add a paid tier when you have 1,000+ free subscribers and a clear value proposition for premium content.

Getting Started

Here's what I'd do this week.

1. Sign up for Buttondown or Beehiiv. Create your account, choose your newsletter name, and configure the basic settings (from name, reply-to address, branding colors).

2. Build a landing page. Scaffold an Astro project, create a single page with your newsletter pitch and an embedded signup form. Deploy to Vercel. Point your custom domain at it.

3. Write your first issue. Don't overthink it. Write about something you know well. Keep it under 1,000 words. Send it to yourself first, then to your list (even if it's just 5 friends you asked to subscribe).

4. Set a schedule and stick to it. Weekly is the sweet spot for most solo newsletters. Every Tuesday or every Thursday. Consistency matters more than frequency.

5. Share everywhere once. Post your landing page on Twitter, LinkedIn, relevant subreddits, and Hacker News (if it's dev-focused). Then focus on making the content so good that people share it for you.

The best newsletter stack is one that gets out of your way and lets you write. Nobody unsubscribes because your newsletter was sent from Buttondown instead of a custom system. They unsubscribe because the content wasn't worth their time. Focus your energy where it matters.