Paul O'Brien's blog

Site Patrol grows up

Sun, 08 Nov 2026 18:00:00 GMT

Happy Sunday!

It’s meant to be a day of rest, but Site Patrol had other ideas. Most of today went on it, with a few other bits squeezed in around the edges.

Plans, texts and status pages

Pro and Business plans. Pro now covers 10 websites, and there’s a new Business plan for anyone looking after lots of sites, with up to 50 websites, checks every 30 seconds on 10 of them and five status pages. It’s all on the pricing page.
Text message alerts. If a site goes down, Site Patrol can now send you a text, and it comes from “SitePatrol” rather than a random number. Pro includes 20 a month. I tested it on my own phone this afternoon and it felt very official.
WhatsApp next. Meta has to check the business and approve the messages first, which can take a couple of days, so fingers crossed for midweek.
Status pages on your own address. Every status page now gets its own name.sitepatrol.app address, or you can put it on your own domain, something like status.yoursite.com, with a helper that walks you through the DNS. On Pro you can add your own logo, colour and contact details too, and notices now show tags and when a problem was resolved.
Live view. A link you can open on another screen to watch every check tick by. Perfect for a spare monitor or a TV in the office. The links run out, so you’re not leaving it open for the world.

The app is looking the part

The apps for iPhone, iPad and Mac are coming along nicely on TestFlight, but I’ll be honest, the Mac app looked messy this afternoon. Icons in every colour, cards that didn’t match and titles printed twice. So I went through every screen and set one set of rules for the lot. Icons now sit in Site Patrol green, with green, amber and red kept for up, slow and down only. Cards all match and the headers are calmer. Overview, Live view and Sites each have one clear job, and the website checker has a better name, Website health. Build 158 went off to TestFlight just before tea, and it already feels like a proper Mac app.

IONOS, the verdict

Yesterday I said the IONOS review would be an interesting read. Well, it’s out. A day after paying, I still had no working mailbox, eight upsells, a support ticket nobody had answered all weekend and, when I tried to cancel, “an error has occurred in our systems”. I’ve now sent my cancellation in writing, so we’ll see how that goes. The full story, with screenshots, is in my IONOS Mail review.

Someone on Bluesky made a great point about it. Support is the hidden feature that can make or break an email service, and it’s very hard to judge until the day you need it. My tip now is to send a question on a weekend before you commit, and see how long it takes a human to answer.

Odds and ends

Mail App 2.1 is out, with a new Add domains button. Sign in with Cloudflare, pick your domain and it’s added, no keys to copy and paste. Chris and I are both on it already.
Newsletter Sender now has a proper share picture, so links show a big card on X and Bluesky. It’s also joined the other apps on paulobrien.dev and the “Also by Paul” footer on this site.
A few app pictures on paulobrien.dev were slow to show up, so a fix for that is on its way.

Have a lovely evening.

As always, sharing the love.

Stay safe

Belt and braces backups

Sat, 07 Nov 2026 18:00:00 GMT

Happy Saturday!

No lie in for me today. It’s been one of those days where every time I finished one thing, it led straight on to the next.

What if Cloudflare closed my account?

That was the question rattling around my head this afternoon. Newsletter Sender runs on Cloudflare, so what happens to your newsletter if the worst happens? The good news is your emails go out through your sending service, such as Amazon SES, so your sending and your reputation aren’t touched. Your subscribers and stats are another matter, so today they got proper looking after.

Backups of any size. Backups are now made in parts, so even a big list with years of sending history is fine. For the curious, 100,000 subscribers comes to about 5 MB, and it’s the sending history that grows.
Restore from a file. Download a backup, install the app on a new Cloudflare account, choose Restore from a file and you’re back up and running. I tested it and every row came back exactly as it was.
A copy in your own Amazon account. If you send with Amazon SES, the app now copies each nightly backup to your own Amazon S3, off Cloudflare altogether. Copies are kept for 31 days and it costs pennies. I set mine up at 5pm and the first copy landed straight away.

If I thought about this, I’m sure others will too, so there’s a new backups guide, a page on exactly what the setup wizard creates in your Amazon account and two new answers in the Q&A.

It was a good day for testing too. Postmark, Resend, Brevo and Mailgun all passed, and the app now has its own Update button, so you can move to a new version with one click. Version 0.2.0 went out this morning.

Zoho Mail, in depth

After my chat with the Zoho team this week, I published an in depth review of Zoho Mail’s business plans. It goes well beyond the free plan, covering what you actually get for your money and who it suits best. If you sign up through my link, Zoho also gives you $100 of Zoho Wallet credit, which is a nice bonus.

Over to the hosted providers

I’ve covered quite a few self hosted mail servers lately, so next week it’s the turn of hosted providers, with Infomaniak, IONOS, iCloud Mail and Runbox all on the list.

I signed up for IONOS Mail Business this morning at 9:29. The page said my account would be ready in “a few more seconds”. My login emails arrived at 14:55, five and a half hours later. Then it decided my domain was being transferred to them, which I never asked for, and the only live chat is an AI bot, so I’ve raised a ticket. Seven hours in, still no mailbox. Let’s just say that review is going to be an interesting read.

Something brewing (a bit more)

Yesterday I teased a new project. It now has a name, Site Patrol, and a proper website with a page for every feature, a pricing page with a full feature table, plan by plan, and secure payments by Stripe. It keeps an eye on your websites so you hear about problems before your customers do. There’s a free forever plan, so do have a look. Apps for iPhone, iPad and Mac are next on the list.

Odds and ends

I now have one admin for everything I run, with every site and mailing list in one place, plus what it’s all costing and each night’s backup. It even has a menu that folds away, as all good admin pages should.
I finished moving everything off my old setup today, and the last of the old branding has gone from the member tools. It feels good to have one home for it all.
ReaderCount now remembers which site you were last looking at, so you don’t have to pick it again every time. A small one, but it was annoying me!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

As always, sharing the love.

Stay safe

Newsletter Sender gets dressed up

Fri, 06 Nov 2026 18:00:00 GMT

Happy Friday!

Yesterday was all about bringing Newsletter Sender back to life. Today has been about making it look the part, and I think it’s finally starting to feel like a proper product.

All dressed up

The home page and features page have had a real makeover. Every feature now sits in its own box with a screen grab of the app at the top, so you can see exactly what you’re getting before you install a thing. Click any grab and it opens up nice and big.

There’s also a short promo video, music and all, right on the home page. It runs just over a minute and walks through the editor, the reports and a count up to 100,000 subscribers sent in under 10 minutes. I’m rather pleased with that one.

If Amazon SES isn’t your thing, there are now step by step guides for Postmark, Mailgun, Brevo and Resend in the help section, plus one on using Cloudflare for sign up confirmations. Better still, when you paste in your key and press Save, the app now sets up the bounce and spam complaint webhook for you. That’s one fiddly job most people would forget about, done automatically.

An edition for agencies

Yesterday I said an agency edition was coming “down the line”. Turns out the line was a lot shorter than I thought. It now has its own page, built for agencies and resellers who look after newsletters for lots of clients. If that sounds like you, there’s an enquiry form at the bottom and I’d love to hear from you.

Posteo and your own domain

On the reviews side, I published a new guide answering a question that comes up time and again: can you use your own domain with Posteo? The short answer is no, by design. The guide explains why, the workaround if you only need to receive mail and how to set your domain up on Proton Mail or Fastmail instead.

Something brewing

I also had a bit of a lightbulb moment this afternoon. What started as an idea for a little Mac app has grown into something much bigger, and I’ve already bought the domain (as you do). I won’t say too much just yet, but if you’ve ever found out your website was down from a customer rather than a computer, I think you’ll like where this is heading. Watch this space.

Odds and ends

A small one, but useful: I can now see how many people actually send a message through my contact form, using ReaderCount, my own cookie-free stats tool. So if you do get in touch, you’ll officially count! 🙂
For anyone wondering what all this costs to run: last night I load tested Newsletter Sender with 100,000 pretend subscribers. Cloudflare sent me a slightly alarming email about database usage, and my bill is still sitting at a grand total of $0. Not bad at all.

Have a lovely weekend, whatever you’re up to.

As always, sharing the love.

Stay safe

Newsletter Sender is back

Thu, 05 Nov 2026 18:00:00 GMT

In a previous life, I founded a successful self-service email marketing platform. Long story short, our upstream provider was sold, leaving their resellers high and dry with a frankly brutal 48 hours’ notice. Fast forward 12 years: while running an audit of my domains the other day, I realised I’d held on to the original name, newslettersender.com. Later that evening, with nostalgia well and truly kicking in, I had a bit of a brainwave: why not build my own platform from scratch?

So, that’s officially the latest project underway. It’s designed to run cleanly on your own Cloudflare account, routing outbound mail through whichever provider you prefer: Amazon SES, Mailgun, Resend, Postmark or Brevo. They’re all solid options, though I’ll always have a soft spot for SES simply because of how rock-solid it’s been for me over the years. If you fancy giving it a go, my Amazon SES guide walks you through the set-up.

First look

Watch this space for progress updates, including plans for a dedicated edition tailored to agencies and resellers down the line.

Latest article: Mox

My latest write-up takes a detailed look at Mox, a free, open source mail server bundled into a single, tidy binary. It includes built-in webmail, a self-learning spam filter and virtually every modern email security standard enabled right out of the box.

Have a read to see where it genuinely shines, and where it still leaves a few gaps.

Until next time

Another properly hectic day

Wed, 04 Nov 2026 18:00:00 GMT

It’s been another properly hectic day. It honestly feels like my to-do list is growing faster than the cold nights are drawing in.

As much as I love reviewing email providers (which probably says everything you need to know about what a geek I am), I get just as much satisfaction out of building things. The apps I choose to make are usually ones I want to use myself, either because the existing options are far too expensive or because they’re missing a feature I desperately need. Other times, I’ll build something simply because I’m toying with a new idea and think it might come in handy. Whatever the reason, I love putting these tools out into the wild for anyone to take for a spin. Almost everything I build is completely free to use because, as you know, my motto is all about sharing the love.

I originally considered publishing all these projects here on paulobrien.com, and I did host a few since they tied into email in one way or another. But adding too many guides, installation steps and repositories risked cluttering what the main site is actually about. With that in mind, I decided to separate things out: as of yesterday, all my developer work is open for public scrutiny over at paulobrien.dev. Have a browse and try out a tool. If you find something useful, keep it; it’s completely on the house.

Speaking of tools, Blogby.email has already gained a brand-new feature that I suspect will be rather popular: newsletter subscriptions. Your readers can now sign up directly from your blog and get an email whenever your next piece is published. It’s a brilliant little addition that makes the platform even more capable, especially as Blogby.email itself doesn’t cost a single penny.

Finally, I’ve just published my latest review covering Mail-in-a-Box, the popular self-hosted email server suite. Do have a read when you get a moment and let me know how you think it stacks up.

As always, sharing the love.

Stay safe

A proper busy bee day

Tue, 03 Nov 2026 16:30:00 GMT

I’ve been a proper busy bee today.

To start, I spent some time adding Reddit communities to the most popular email provider pages across the site, making it easier to see what everyday users are actually experiencing. I also launched a handy little tool that lets you move email between providers while preserving your folder structure and Gmail tags. It handles up to 10 GB per transfer, and best of all, it’s completely free to use.

The main highlight of the day, though, is Blogby.email. Because I enjoy keeping this daily log and value having zero friction, I built and launched a self-hosted blogging platform designed to run directly on Cloudflare, happily ticking away even on their free tier.

Setup takes about two minutes, and from then on, you simply blog by sending an email. The subject line becomes the post title, any hashtags turn into tags, and you can attach photos or write whatever is on your mind. You just send it to your private blog address, and it’s live on its own page within 30 seconds. It makes posting on the go effortless while an idea is still fresh. If you fancy having a poke around, there’s a live demo here, and you can grab your own free copy directly at blogby.email.

Alongside that, I managed to get two new pieces of writing published: a comprehensive look at Cloudron and a practical setup guide for Cloudflare DMARC management.

And finally, for those following along with the Cloudflare-hosted mail server project, things are moving swiftly. It’s genuinely just around the corner now.

As always, sharing the love.

Stay safe

Mostly housekeeping

Mon, 02 Nov 2026 14:30:00 GMT

Today has been mostly housekeeping. I wasn’t entirely happy with how the featured images were looking across the blog, so I’ve updated the lot to give everything a cleaner, more consistent feel.

Next up, I’m in the early stages of reviewing Neo. It’s been on my to-do list for quite a while now, and I hope you’ll find it an interesting read once it’s ready. If you’ve taken Neo for a spin recently, or even in the past, I’d love to hear how you got on with it.

Working on the recent mailcow and Stalwart reviews was genuinely enjoyable. There’s something deeply satisfying about installing a service via the command line and watching it just work on the first try.

On the site front, visitor numbers have doubled over the past fortnight, and the bounce rate continues to drop week on week. It’s a good reminder of just how worthwhile it is to revisit older posts and give them a proper refresh.

Meanwhile, my Cloudflare-hosted mail app is almost ready for beta testing. If you fancy taking it for a spin and trying your best to break it, your feedback would be hugely appreciated. As a small thank you, anyone helping out will go straight to the front of the queue for a free copy at launch.

Once the mail app is out in the wild, the next undertaking will be a lightweight website and blogging platform designed to run directly on Cloudflare Workers. Picture something akin to Ghost, but free, fast and feature-rich, and you’ll have a fair idea of what I’m building.

Until next time,

Stay safe

A quiet Sunday start

Sun, 01 Nov 2026 09:00:00 GMT

It’s just gone 9am and I’m the only one awake in the house, apart from Molly, my ever-faithful Westie.

I won’t get a massive amount done today, as family life and weekend commitments naturally take priority, but I’ve snuck in an early start to tick off a few quick bits:

Link clean-up: Ran a full Link Inspector check and sorted out a handful of stray broken links. It always feels like a never-ending cycle, particularly with external sites moving things around.
Tool allowances: Put the finishing touches to the free tools by setting sensible daily and weekly limits. While they’re completely free for members, each check incurs a small infrastructure cost on my side, so this keeps everything running sustainably.
Testing a self-hosted suite on Cloudflare: I’m currently putting an all-in-one email app through its paces on Cloudflare, with calendar, contacts and drive on the way. It’s lightning fast, built for teams, handles dozens of custom domains and comes packed with features. And yes, I built it myself! Watch this space for updates.
A new publishing platform: I’m also nearing the finish line on another Cloudflare-hosted project designed for blogs and websites. While publishing platforms might seem slightly outside my usual remit, this one is member-driven (much like Ghost), meaning it relies heavily on privacy controls and email delivery. More details on that soon.

Exciting times ahead for paulobrien.com. If you’d like to stay in the loop without checking the journal every day, give me a follow over on Bluesky (and you never know, I might even follow you back! 🙂).

Enjoy your Sunday, whatever your plans are.

Keep safe,

Behind the scenes: a new design, 230 email providers, and free tools

Sat, 31 Oct 2026 14:30:37 GMT

Good afternoon,

I’ve spent the past couple of months working flat out on a complete redesign of paulobrien.com, alongside building a suite of practical tools for email, web, and DNS.

I’m genuinely proud of how the new look has come together. I wanted something distinct—a site that stands out from the endless sea of generic blog templates and off-the-shelf themes. The email client-inspired layout feels right at home here.

Free Tools and the 230 Email Provider Directory

Why spend weeks researching 230 email providers in granular detail and publishing every finding for free?

During quieter periods, I often hunt for emerging and niche providers using Google and Bing, but search results are perpetually clogged with the same few affiliate-heavy lists churning out the "top 10". I couldn't find a single comprehensive, objective directory anywhere online.

So, with a bit of AI leverage, several late nights, and a lot of manual verification (which is still an ongoing effort), I built my own database of tested and queued services. Being inclined to share my work, I've published the entire index—all 230 providers—complete with side-by-side comparison tools.

I’d love to know what you think of the dataset, what needs tweaking, and which services I should review next.

Free Email, Website, and DNS Tools

Managing multiple websites and dabbling in development meant my bookmarks bar had become an unruly mess of single-purpose utilities. Most were mediocre, locked behind strict usage limits, or only solved half the problem at hand.

With plenty of patience, I built my own browser-based tools to fix those exact headaches—and I’m delighted to make them freely available to readers without artificial paywalls. You can explore the full collection on the Tools page.

That’s all from me for now. It’s Saturday, the sun is actually making an appearance, and some fresh air is well overdue.

Until next time,