About Kōlea
I built the email tool I wanted to use
about-rob
A photo of Rob
How it started
I'm Rob Conery, and I teach programmers through books, videos, and a newsletter at Big Machine. For years I used the usual email services, and they sent my email just fine. What they couldn't do was tell me which email sold a course, or understand that "stop sending me this series" isn't the same as "stop sending me everything".
So I wrote my own. It sends to Big Machine's list of more than 13,000 readers, and it turned out other people who write and sell things wanted the same answers. Kōlea is that tool, rebuilt so anyone can use it.
The name comes from the kōlea, the Pacific golden plover. Every year it flies from Alaska to Hawaiʻi without stopping, and it comes back to the same patch of ground. They spend the winter here in Hawaiʻi, and I've always liked that they know where home is.
What I care about
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Numbers you can trust
Counts, rates, and money are exact, and you can see where each one came from. If a number is easy to misread, that's a bug and I'll fix it.
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No surprises
Before anything you can't undo, like sending a broadcast or importing a list, Kōlea tells you what's about to happen and waits for you to say yes.
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Respect for your readers
Your readers get to decide what they hear from you, and you can always see who unsubscribed from what, and why.
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Less fiddling
Everything starts with a sensible setting, so you can spend your time writing instead of configuring.
I also care that your mail goes out once, and only to the people who asked for it, even when a server falls over halfway through. If you want the technical side, you can read how Kōlea is built to handle failure .
Come have a look
It's free to start. Bring your list over and see how your own numbers look.