Publishing a newsletter is now as easy as blogging

Over the last couple of months, we've overhauled Hashnode's blog editor to make it easier than ever to create compelling posts. And now, we're taking things a step further by enhancing its ability to deliver your content as email newsletters — so you can grow your audience faster and reach them wherever they like to read.

If you’re blogging with Hashnode, you’re already on your way to publishing a newsletter. As a strategist who works on both content creation and distribution, I can't wait to show you how our latest update can help you address a whole new reader base — without adding to your workload.

Deliver your articles as newsletters — in all their glory

Our goal with this update was to enable you to get your tech newsletter off the ground in an instant.

When you’re ready to start delivering your articles to your audience by email, just flip the switch in your blog’s dashboard, and that's it. Your subscribers will receive articles in their entirety in their inboxes as they’re published.

That means you can find an audience among Hashnode's community of more than 2.3 million people in tech — posts are automatically added to our global feed — and also reach subscribers that you connect with on other platforms with the same content.

That's a big step up from how we used to previously deliver only truncated versions of your posts to newsletter subscribers. Plus, with each post, you'll have the option to skip sending it out to newsletter subscribers — handy for when you don't want to hit their inboxes too often.

Craft beautiful newsletters with ease

We recently introduced our powerful Neptune editor on Hashnode to help you compose and format your content without breaking a sweat. That goes for both posts as well as newsletters.

Add formatted text, code blocks with syntax highlighting for over 40 programming languages, rich embedded media, custom tables, and more. Your posts will look nearly* as good in an email client as on your blog.

Of course, you don't have to take our word for it. We've also built a preview feature to show you what your post and newsletter will look like before you send them out in web and email versions, both on desktops and mobile devices.

Get people talking

One of the best parts about growing your audience is being able to engage them in dialogue. As before, your readers can comment directly on your posts, or follow the links in your newsletters to join Hashnode and comment on the web version — and that doesn't require any additional steps needed in your publishing workflow.

Our comments system is already primed for lively discussions: your audience can reply to comments in a thread, ❤️ comments multiple times to show your appreciation or support, and discover commenters' profiles to follow here on Hashnode.

This is a great way to initiate two-way conversations with people who care about your content, get feedback on your posts, learn what your audience wants to see next, and connect with your readers more intimately.

All the features you need to launch your newsletter right away

Everything good about blogging on Hashnode applies to our newsletter functionality. As before, you own the content you create — and you can take advantage of Neptune's long list of editing features, from Markdown support to instant media embeds.

If you're all about the numbers with your newsletters, we've got you covered. Head to your dashboard anytime to view metrics for each newsletter, including the number of subscribers, as well as open rate and clickthrough rate.

We've already built a few powerful audience growth features into Hashnode. First, each post you publish is shared with our fast-growing community in our content feed, which every member can see when they log in to the site or app.

Next, all your posts include a newsletter subscription form for readers to sign up. And every blog with newsletters enabled automatically gets a dedicated landing page with a newsletter sign-up form that you can share with your followers and contacts elsewhere (find it in the top navbar on your blog; the URL will look something like blogname.hashnode.dev/newsletter).

Plus, if you've got posts stored in a GitHub repo, you can import it all in a flash. And should you want to build a home for your content elsewhere, you can easily export your posts on demand.

Get started with a newsletter on Hashnode today

There's nothing to it. Simply sign up for a free Hashnode account at hashnode.com, customize your blog, and you're off to the races.

Newsletters are now enabled by default for all newly created blogs, so you don't have to do anything to turn them on. Once you begin creating content, invite your followers to subscribe to your newsletter, and watch your audience grow.

This is just the beginning

We're so excited to be able to host the next generation of tech newsletter authors here on Hashnode, and we're thinking about what the future looks like for them.

Over the next couple of months, we'll ship several features to improve your content creation experience. We're also thinking through ways to enable authors to make money, with things like support for newsletter sponsorship, for example.

The revamped newsletter features are now ready for you to create content with. So go forth, invite your followers to subscribe, and write up a storm.

We can't wait to see what you'll publish next with Hashnode. Show us your creations on our Discord server, and let us know how you're getting along with our newsletter tools here in the comments and over on Twitter.

Questions and answers