This is the type of headline that usually sounds the alarms and announces shutting down a service. Thankfully this is quite the opposite.

Since moving my blog back to WordPress I’ve been looking at what to do with my newsletter. It was the biggest sticking point that almost sent me back a step, but I am much happier posting to the indieweb. So I began looking around. The trendy Revue was an option however importing old issues was a Hughe issue. I settled eventually on the place where everyone else is – Substack.

As time went on and I got things set up, I just couldn’t get comfortable with this. There is nothing wrong with the service, and loads of people use it happily. I just have a few worries about services giving things away for free, they always eventually have to recoup it somewhere (looking at you Medium). There also is no way to turn off tracking, another thing I am not comfortable with. As such I just didn’t want to get invested in a service that I wasn’t 100% on.

So I built my own version. Greg Thinks Things

This will make it easier for signing up, viewing old versions and means I can keep control of everything from start to finish. No tracking, no third parties – just me and you like an email should be.

If you’ve subscribed already nothing changes. The emails will come to you from my personal email address and you can just email me back if you want to get in touch. I’m looking forward to sending the next one so if you’ve not signed up already there is no better time to do it.

Also my membership is no more. Thank you to all those that have been contributing, the money had 100% gone towards hosting. I will look at options to offer a paid service with perks I the future depending on how things go.