I'm researching building a platform for users to easily gather email subscribers and contact them, for example to allow Indiehackers to gather subscribers for product updates. It seems my options are:
I want to avoid #1 was it really dilutes my value, at that point you might as well just use Mailchimp and not me even though I'll be adding nice features on top.
#3 would be the easiest, as it skips the emailing feature all together, but being able to contact your subscribers would be a very valuable feature.
#2 is the ideal solution, however afaik sending emails customer-to-customer is a tricky feature. First you have to handle allowing users to build templates/content that are compatible with email providers. You also have to prevent spam between users. I'm thinking if I went this route I would just allow users to send simple text/markdown emails to their subscribers, this would avoid most of the compatibility/responsiveness issues. I'd also use an email service like Sendgrid, but I'd still have to find a way to prevent my service from being blacklisted or sent to spam if my customers subscribers are bouncing.
How would you build a service like this?
as a startup founder, #1 seems like the best option (or another CRM paired with an email -- my favorite is Lemlist).