# Self-Hosted Newsletter System on EU Infrastructure

## Who this is for
- Independent journalists, analysts, and researchers who want a serious
  newsletter without paying a platform tax or handing over their list.
- Small teams running internal briefings (compliance, market intel,
  regulatory) where data sovereignty matters.
- Niche publishers whose audience is too small to justify a paid platform
  but too important to run from a generic SaaS.
- EU organisations (including NGOs in Luxembourg) with sovereignty
  mandates: legal, financial, healthcare, public sector.

## Problem
- Most "EU-friendly" newsletter tools still route data through US
  infrastructure (AWS, Google Cloud, Intuit-owned Mailchimp). GDPR
  compliance on paper does not change the jurisdiction the servers
  sit in.
- Outlook desktop renders email through Microsoft Word's HTML engine.
  It does not support flexbox, modern CSS, or anything built after 2007.
  Most newsletter platforms quietly accept a broken layout for ~30% of
  corporate readers.
- Paid platforms charge €25–50/month minimum for a system the publisher
  does not own. Subscriber lists, content, and analytics are locked
  inside the vendor.

## What we do
- We provide a self-hosted newsletter system, open-sourced as a template at
  github.com/crystallized-lu/crystallized-newsletter.
- Runs on three vendors headquartered in France: Mistral (AI writing),
  Brevo (email delivery), Scaleway (Paris-region serverless functions
  and storage). End-to-end EU jurisdiction.
- Set up via a one-time Claude Code skill (`/start-newsletter`) that
  walks a non-developer through identity, cadence, voice, sources,
  vendor signup, and deployment in 45–60 minutes.
- Renders email through MJML (the same engine used internally by
  major newsletter platforms) so it looks identical in Gmail, Apple
  Mail, Yahoo, Thunderbird, and the Outlook desktop versions
  enterprises still run.

## How it works day-to-day
- 05:00 – daily-fetch pulls every RSS feed on the source list. Mistral
  translates, categorises, and scores new articles for relevance.
- 07:00 – daily-draft composes the issue (subject line, intro, glossary,
  per-article editorial notes) and emails a preview to the owner with
  three buttons: Regenerate, Send Now, or Discard.
- 08:00 – dispatcher auto-sends to the subscriber list if no button was
  clicked within the hour. Idempotent: never sends twice.
- Sunday 23:00: meta-distill reads the week's regenerate notes (e.g.
  "too US-centric", "lead with the regulation angle") and distills them
  into permanent, plain-English editorial rules stored in a Markdown
  file the owner can read and edit. After 4–6 weeks the newsletter
  sounds like the editor wrote it: through accumulated explicit rules,
  not fine-tuning.

## Pricing
- Daily newsletter to a few hundred subscribers: roughly €3–€5 a month
  in Mistral API costs. Brevo and Scaleway free tiers cover the rest.
- Two AI tiers, switchable in one config line: `mistral-large` for
  sharper editorial judgment, `mistral-small` for functionally free
  and more generic notes.

## Outcomes
- A newsletter the owner controls outright: code, subscriber list,
  content, and editorial rules.
- EU jurisdiction end-to-end: no US sub-processor in the data path.
- Email that renders correctly in every major client, including Outlook
  desktop.
- An editorial loop that compounds over weeks, transparently and
  reversibly.

## How we work
- Book a 15-minute call to walk through the setup. No commitment.
- The template is free and open-source; the call exists to help
  non-developers complete the setup smoothly.
- See also: [AI in Luxembourg](/ai-in-luxembourg/index.md),
  [AI Orchestration](/services/ai-orchestration/index.md),
  [For Solopreneurs](/for-solopreneurs/index.md).

## What this is not
- It is not a Mailchimp or Substack replacement for every use case.
  Self-hosted means the owner is responsible for deliverability, list
  hygiene, and sender reputation. Brevo handles most of this, not all.
- It needs a domain the owner controls for DKIM/SPF. Without that,
  email will hit spam folders. The skill walks through setup but cannot
  skip DNS propagation.
- Setup is an hour of guided work, not instant.
- Smooth setup currently requires Claude Code. A standalone CLI is
  possible but not the current path.

## Next step
Visit the canonical page to see the architecture, day-in-the-life
timeline, and an interactive demo of the Sunday editorial-rule distill.

Canonical page: https://www.crystallized.lu/showcase/news-automation