👋 Hi {{first_name}},
I have built and marketed product for the last two decades. I have always held the belief that building a product was never the moat, even pre-AI.
Post-AI, it absolutely is the bare minimum. When you are able to build distribution, the differentiator is to act fast on your customer’s needs and keep their trust by shipping as fast as possible. That remains the primary way that you are able to build a long-lasting moat.
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Beehiiv vs Mailcheap
I switched to Beehiiv primarily because their CEO Tyler Denk gets it. To ship relentlessly and meet the customers where they are has been the top differentiating factor for Beehiiv.
Marc Lou is also like Tyler. He understands a problem, treats building products like a game, and ships the product relentlessly without skipping a beat. I have been following his indie entrepreneur journey for years now and also had the chance to meet him in person last year.
I respect these gentlemen for their sheer focus in shipping product. When Tyler tweeted that vibe-coding an end-to-end newsletter platform is a futile effort, Marc Lou announced Mailcheap as a cheaper and affordable alternative to Beehiiv.
What Marc Lou has done is build an alternative to a platform he was getting squeezed by. He could afford to do that: build an alternative and continue to maintain it.
Because he's a builder at heart, he can keep chipping away at whatever needs he has and solve them himself and, by virtue, for all his customers too.
So are you saying I can build a Mailcheap too?
Not all of us are Marc Lou. Or Tyler Denk.
The build-versus-buy decision, especially in terms of choosing a newsletter platform, comes down to this scenario. If you are able to vibe-code a solution, that doesn’t mean you are going to maintain it for months.
To build a platform and maintain it for years to scratch your own itch does not sustain long-term, especially when you do not have the discipline and patience to maintain it.
In that scenario, it's always better to choose the platform which scratches that itch on your behalf and continues doing that for a long time, whenever you feel itchy.
If the ESP platform listens to you and continues building everything that you ask for and then some, I think that would be the worthwhile test of a worthy newsletter platform, regardless of where you are in the newsletter journey.
That’s the reason I moved to beehiiv, since building and maintaining my own ESP was never a priority for me. I am guessing the same decision applies to 99% of you as well.
Does this reasoning help you choose a newsletter platform better, instead of building it?
If you still have questions, I would be happy to be your sounding board. Let me know by hitting ‘Reply’ on this email, or send a note to [email protected].
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Cheers,
Renga from LetterStack
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