Tools: Why I Built a Newsletter + Podcast Platform That Doesn't Lock You In

The Problem ## What giv1 Does Differently ## Who It's For ## Tech Stack Every newsletter platform wants to own your audience. Every podcast host wants you locked into their ecosystem. I got tired of it. So I built giv1.com — a combined newsletter and podcast platform where you own your content and your subscriber list. If you're a creator running both a newsletter and a podcast, you're probably juggling: That's 2-3 dashboards, 2-3 billing cycles, and zero portability if you decide to leave. Indie creators, solo devs with side projects, small communities. If you've ever wanted to send updates to your users AND record the occasional audio deep-dive without duct-taping three services together — that's the use case. Built with Node.js, a pretty standard setup. The interesting bit is the audio processing pipeline — server-side transcoding so you can upload basically anything and it comes out as a properly formatted podcast episode. Still early days, but it's live and I'm using it for my own projects. Would love feedback from other indie devs who run newsletters or podcasts. Check it out: giv1.com Building in public — one SaaS at a time. Happy to answer questions about the architecture or the business side. Templates let you quickly answer FAQs or store snippets for re-use. Are you sure you want to hide this comment? It will become hidden in your post, but will still be visible via the comment's permalink. Hide child comments as well For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse - Substack or Mailchimp for emails - Anchor or Buzzsprout for audio - Some glue in between to cross-promote - One dashboard for both newsletters and podcasts - Export everything — subscriber lists, content, audio files. No hostage situations. - RSS-first — your podcast feed is yours, point it wherever you want - Simple pricing — no per-subscriber gotchas that punish you for growing