Internal newsletter software: a friendly guide to choosing one
· The Paperbeam AI team
Picture the person who writes your company newsletter. It's late in the week, there's a half-finished draft open, and they're waiting on updates from sales, product and support so it goes out with something from everyone.
People read it, too. That's why it's worth getting the tools right. If you're looking at internal newsletter software, here's a plain guide to the choices, written the way we'd explain it to a friend.
What internal newsletter software does
At heart, every option helps you do the same three things: gather the news, shape it into something pleasant to read, and get it in front of the whole company. The differences come down to who does the gathering and the writing.
The main kinds of tools
Email newsletter builders. Templates, drag-and-drop layouts and send tools made for internal email. They're great when you have a communications person who enjoys writing and wants a polished design. The writing is still done by hand.
Intranet and employee app suites. Bigger platforms where the newsletter is one channel among many, alongside a home page, announcements and a mobile app. They suit large organizations with a dedicated comms team.
Automated digests. Tools that pull updates from your other software and send a round-up on a schedule. They save time, though many read like a list of notifications rather than something you'd want to sit down with.
A company newspaper. This is the idea we fell in love with, and it's what we build. Instead of a person collecting updates, the paper is written from the tools your teams already use, then laid out like a real newspaper.
What makes one worth having
The best internal newsletters have a few things in common. The news comes from where the work actually happens, not just from whoever replied to the request for updates. Every team shows up, so sales, product, support and leadership all find something of their own. The numbers can be trusted, with a way to click through to the original. Old issues are kept and searchable, so the newsletter slowly becomes the record of how things happened. Pricing grows gently with the company rather than per seat. And for people who aren't at a desk, it helps if they can listen too.
Where a company newspaper fits
We started Paperbeam with a simple idea: what if your company had its own newspaper?
Each edition has a masthead with your paper's name, a dated and numbered issue, a lead story and sections for each team: Product Updates, Customer Calls, New Customers & Expansions, Customer Support & Renewals, Team News and more. It's written from 40+ tools your teams already use, like HubSpot, Salesforce, Gong, Slack, Notion, Linear, Jira, Zendesk and Stripe.
Before it goes out, every figure is checked against the record it came from, and quotes have to match word for word. If a claim can't be backed up, it's rewritten once or cut. Every story lists its sources.
Every edition is kept and searchable, so a new hire can read back through the issues and catch up on the story. And each edition also comes as a short daily podcast, for the drive in or a walk at lunch.
Pricing is by readers, never per seat, so the whole company can read the same paper. You can see the plans on our pricing page.
When a classic newsletter is still right
If your newsletter is a voice, a weekly letter from leadership or a place to celebrate people in their own words, keep it. Hand-written newsletters are lovely, and plenty of teams will keep one alongside a company paper. We wrote more about that in Internal newsletter or company newspaper.
If what you really want is for every team to know what every other team did, without anyone chasing updates, a newspaper written from your tools is worth a look.
Come read one
Have a look at a whole edition of The Northwind Ledger, the paper for our made-up demo company Northwind.
When you're ready, start your own paper. Your first 14 editions are free, no card needed. We'd love to know what you think. (Fine print: 14 editions or 30 days, whichever comes first.)