Ernie SmithMar 7
A quick thought experiment to see if I can architect a simple, light-weight self-hosted paywall. think it can be done: 1.) Set up Amazon SES account (hardest part, honestly, but very doable—less than $10/month) 2.) Set up an open-source email sending tool (Listmonk, $1.80/month on Pikapods)

an envelope is flying through ...
Show threadErnie SmithMar 7
3.) Set up Activepieces, a Zapier alternative ($3.80/month on Pikapods) 4.) Sign up for a Ko-Fi account (5% service fee) and connect it to Stripe (2.7% + 5¢ fee) and/or PayPal (2.89% + 49¢ fee) 5.) Connect Listmonk and Ko-Fi together using a webhook on ActivePieces and a short script.
Show threadErnie SmithMar 7
6.) Set up the script to add the user to a list or a segment of an existing list using Listmonk’s API. 7.) Set it so that you send a transactional email to that user. 8.) In the email, include a link to a page on your website 9.) On that page, load a cookie.
Show threadErnie SmithMar 7
10.) On your site, create a CSS type that hides content unless a certain class is loaded in the body tag. 11.) Create a small script that adds that script to the body tag only if it detects that cookie. (You could probably harden it if you really wanted, but it doesn’t have to be that strong.)
Show threadErnie SmithMar 7
12.) Create a login page that checks against your list—again, using a webhook that triggers an ActivePieces script that, if the email matches, sends a message to the user with a link to the page with the cookie.
Show threadErnie SmithMar 7
13.) And if the person ends their subscription, set up an exit script in Activepieces, with a goodbye email and a flow that moves them back to the free list. Same format as the hello email. Works essentially the same way. No overthinking. That’s it.
Show threadErnie SmithMar 7
That’s $5.60 in additional hosting, $10 for email, and 8% in fees. And you could cut it further: Listmonk (as well as its quite good competitor Keila) can be hosted on a mini PC, or hosted on the same server space somewhere. PikaPods is just a really easy way to get the functionality.
Show threadErnie Smith
Plus, if you don’t want to pay Ko-Fi a big cut if it takes off, you can pay $12/month and that’s all the cut they take. Amazon is by far the cheapest email option, but you can also use something like Mailgun or Sendgrid if you want something not owned by Amazon.
Mar 7 at 6:10amWeb
Show threadErnie SmithMar 7
I guess my thought here is to point out that we talk a lot about how this stuff is super hard and unmanageable. This approach requires minimal code and could be put together by a junior coder in a weekend. You could do it on a static site. And there is still room to make it cheaper.
Show threadErnie SmithMar 7
I bet the AT Protocol could make this even simpler, by the way.