Choosing how your issues send

Applies however you send.

Nearly every newsletter should leave sending with Issue Mint. It works from signup, it needs no account anywhere else, and the boundaries on it are set well above where a normal publication runs.

Two things make moving worth it, and only two: you want the sender reputation to be an asset you own, or your list has passed the point where hosted sending will carry it. Everything else on this page is detail underneath those two.

Who should stay with Issue Mint sending

Issue Mint sending suits anybody whose list is comfortably under 15,000 active subscribers and who would rather write than administer an AWS account.

That is not a hedge. Issues are put together and delivered the same way whoever holds the sending account, and there is nothing about the hosted arrangement that holds a newsletter back at ordinary sizes. The full picture of what applies is on the limits on hosted sending, and the honest summary of that page is that most publications never meet a single one of them.

Add your own domain whatever else you decide

Adding a domain is the change with the best return, and it is not a move to another provider at all.

Your issues start arriving from your own address, signed by your own domain, while Issue Mint carries on doing the sending. It costs one visit to your DNS provider, which you were making anyway for your website, and it needs no account with Amazon or anybody else. See sending from your own domain. Do this first, and treat the rest of this page as a separate question.

Moving because you want the reputation

Reputation with mailbox providers accrues to whoever holds the sending account, so on hosted sending it accrues to us.

That is the right arrangement while a newsletter is small, because a new sender with no history has a harder time than an established one. It stops being the right arrangement when a publication is large enough that its delivery record is worth something and portable enough that it should come with you if you ever leave. That is the case for using your own Amazon SES account, and it is the reason the warning at the cap reads as a promotion rather than a threat.

Moving because you have passed the cap

Hosted sending stops at 15,000 active subscribers across an account, and moving to your own sending account is the answer rather than a larger plan.

The warning starts before you get there and there is a grace period after it, both listed on the limits on hosted sending. Worth keeping apart from your bill: the cap is a sending boundary and your plan is a billing one, and the cap is not your plan limit explains why they happen to be the same number. Paying more does not lift the cap, and a Scale customer on hosted sending meets it in exactly the same place.

Amazon SES or your own SMTP server

Choose Amazon SES, unless you have a specific reason to use your own SMTP server.

SES reports bounces and complaints back, so your list keeps cleaning itself the way it did under hosted sending, and Issue Mint does the setup inside your AWS account rather than handing you a checklist. An SMTP server cannot report anything once the connection closes, so every dead address stays on your list until you find it yourself. The whole of that trade is in using your own SMTP server, and it is worth reading before choosing SMTP because it is easy to underestimate.

What moving asks of you

Moving asks you for an account with a provider, credentials that stay valid, and the consequences of your own list hygiene.

Credentials break: a rotated access key, a tightened permission, a password change on a mail server. Issue Mint checks weekly and emails you, and until it is fixed publishing is locked and a scheduled issue goes back to draft rather than waiting. The reputation being yours also means a bad import is yours: nobody here pauses your sending, and nobody here can, because it is your relationship with your provider.

What does not change either way

Moving changes nothing about your Issue Mint bill, your list, your website, your archive, your sponsorship pages or any number in your dashboard.

Sending is the only thing the arrangement touches. The same is true in reverse: when hosted sending stops at a limit, nothing else stops with it. Prices for every plan are on the pricing page, and none of them charge differently for how your issues leave the building.

Changing your mind later

Moving to your own account is a form to fill in. Coming back is not, and that is the one asymmetry worth planning around.

Removing your credentials locks publishing rather than handing delivery back to us, so the remove button is not an undo button. Adding and removing a domain, by contrast, is reversible in both directions: remove the domain and issues go back to your issuemint.com address on the next send.