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Notes on messaging, pricing and self-hosting

Honest comparisons, pricing teardowns and practical guides from the team building an open-source messaging platform.

A transparent glass box full of messaging machinery next to a sealed black box
Comparisons 9 min read

An honest look at Messy as an open-source Intercom alternative

Intercom is a great product with a bill that grows in three directions at once. Here is what an open-source replacement covers, what it does not, and the math at 5 and 20 seats.

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Rafael Sadiq

July 7, 2026

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A product manager weighing options at a whiteboard covered in sticky-note columns
Comparisons 10 min

Customer.io alternatives: choose by billing model, not feature list

Every alternatives list compares features. But teams rarely leave Customer.io over features; they leave over how the bill grows. Here are six options sorted by billing model.

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Rafael Sadiq

June 29, 2026

A vintage mechanical taxi meter overflowing with coins onto a dark reflective surface
Pricing teardowns 9 min

Intercom pricing explained: seats, Fin resolutions, and usage fees

An Intercom invoice is three bills stapled together: seats, AI resolutions and channel usage. Two of the three grow without anyone approving anything. Here is the full anatomy.

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Rafael Sadiq

June 22, 2026

Retro poster illustration of three carrier pigeons racing in numbered sky lanes
Comparisons 10 min

Novu vs Knock vs Courier: which notification layer fits, and when none of them do

Three good tools, one shared blind spot. How Novu, Knock and Courier differ on self-hosting, pricing and workflow depth, and the question to ask before picking any of them.

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Rafael Sadiq

June 15, 2026

A tidy mini server rack with neat cables and status LEDs glowing on a wooden desk
Guides 8 min

Self-hosted messaging: what it actually takes to run your own Intercom

The pitch is easy: your customer data on your servers, no per-seat bill. The part nobody writes down is the ops. Here is the full picture, including the boring bits.

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Rafael Sadiq

June 8, 2026

A harbor wall tide gauge showing a dark high-water stain far above the calm water below
Pricing teardowns 7 min

Customer.io pricing explained: billed on your peak profile count

Delete half your list and your Customer.io bill stays the same until next period, because you are billed on the peak, not the present. The mechanics, the traps, and the cleanup routine.

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Rafael Sadiq

June 1, 2026

Three brass keys on a ring resting on a stack of white envelopes against a blue backdrop
Guides 8 min

Transactional email on your own SES keys: the BYOK setup, end to end

Resold email carries a markup and someone else's sending reputation. Bringing your own SES keys gets you provider cost and full ownership, without giving up templates, tracking or delivery rules.

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Rafael Sadiq

May 25, 2026

Blueprint schematic of a message routing system branching to phone, envelope, chat and bell outlets
Guides 9 min

What is notification infrastructure? A plain-English guide

Every product ends up with messaging code smeared across the codebase: an SMTP call here, a Twilio call there, templates in string literals. Notification infrastructure is the fix. Here is what the term actually covers.

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Rafael Sadiq

May 12, 2026