How do you set things up so your fans can subscribe to email notifications to your website?
There are plugins that let you manage your email list on your own web server, so all the information is kept private. That also means all the email sent to your subscribers, is sent from your domain and your hosting company’s servers.
I generally recommend against doing that. Servers that send out a lot of email risk getting flagged as spammers and blacklisted. This can make your hosting company block your account, or at the very least keep any of your newsletters from being delivered. It’s difficult and time-consuming to get un-blacklisted.
For a modest number of subscribers (under 2000), there are free email sending services out there. I’ve tried a few, and Mailchimp.com is the best I’ve found so far (here I compare it to Mailerlite). If your subscriber base grows beyond 2000 there’s a small monthly charge, but in that case you have a large enough base that you’re getting value out of it.
If there’s another service you’d like to draw my attention to, please comment below or use my Contact form. Thanks!