More than one newsletter on one account

An Issue Mint account is built to hold several newsletters. Each one gets its own website, its own list, its own issues and its own settings, and your plan is sized on the subscribers across all of them together.

One thing to know before you plan around it: the setup form updates the newsletter you already have rather than creating another one, so a second newsletter is something to ask us for today rather than something you can add yourself. Write to us and we will set it up on your account.

What each newsletter keeps to itself

Almost everything a reader can see belongs to one newsletter and nothing else.

That covers its name, address and timezone, its publishing schedule, its logo, colour and type, its custom domain and the DNS records that go with it, and how it sends, so one newsletter can be on hosted sending while another goes through your own Amazon SES account. Its subscriber list is separate too: an address on both lists is two subscribers, and unsubscribing from one has no effect on the other.

The same goes for the working parts. Each newsletter has its own link library, issues, sections, sponsorship inventory and enquiries, its own signup form and embed key, its own website settings, and its own analytics. Nothing is pooled and nothing is shared by accident.

What one account shares

An Issue Mint account shares four things between its newsletters: the login, the plan, the bill and the sending reputation.

Your name, email address, password and security settings are the account’s, not a newsletter’s, and so is the trial. The Chrome extension pairs with the account and then lists the editable issues of every newsletter on it, so collecting links for two publications does not mean pairing twice. Sending reputation is the one shared thing that can surprise people: Issue Mint holds bounce and complaint rates against the account, because Amazon does, so a pause stops hosted sending for every newsletter on it at once.

How billing counts across them

The plan is decided by active subscribers across every newsletter on the account, added together.

Pending, unsubscribed and suppressed addresses are not counted, because they cost nothing to hold. Two lists of 3,000 active subscribers each put the account at 6,000, which is the same plan as one list of 6,000: pricing is by size of audience rather than by number of publications, and the price ladder is the whole of it. The plan then moves on its own as the total changes, which automatic plan changes covers in full.

The one thing worth doing the arithmetic on is a reader who takes both. That person is on two lists, so they count twice towards the plan and receive two emails, and splitting one audience across two newsletters can therefore cost more than keeping it together.

Hosted sending limits are counted per account

Every limit on hosted sending applies to the account, not to each newsletter, so running two does not double any of them.

The subscriber cap is 15,000 active subscribers per account, counted across every newsletter you run. The monthly email allowance, the daily ceiling on a new account and the thresholds that pause sending work the same way, and the limits on hosted sending lists all of them with their warning points. Moving to your own Amazon SES or SMTP account lifts every one of them, at no extra cost, and is done per newsletter.

When one newsletter with sections is the better answer

Two topics usually want two sections, not two newsletters.

Sections group the links inside a single issue, with their own headings, so a weekly roundup can carry a research section and a jobs section without asking a reader to subscribe twice or paying for them twice. Building an issue in the composer is where that happens, and sections covers how they are set up. A second newsletter earns its place when the audiences are genuinely different people, when the schedules differ, or when one of them needs its own domain and its own sender identity.

Deleting one of several

Deleting one newsletter leaves the others completely untouched.

Its subscribers stop counting the moment it goes, so the account gets smaller and the plan follows at the next review rather than immediately. Deleting a newsletter is worth reading first, because it takes the list, the issues and the archive with it and there is no undo.