Strategy 8 min read · · Last updated:
By Mark Ashworth · Founder, ChurnTools

The 14 Best SaaS Retention & Growth Newsletters (2026)

The retention, growth, and customer-success newsletters I actually read in my inbox, grouped by what each is good for, with honest notes on who each is for and which are worth paying for.

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TLDR: Most people subscribe to a dozen newsletters and read none. This is the shorter, honest list of retention, growth, and customer-success newsletters actually worth your inbox in 2026, grouped by what each is good for:

  • Strategy & growth: Lenny's Newsletter, Growth Unhinged (Kyle Poyar), Elena Verna
  • Customer success: Sixteen Ventures (Lincoln Murphy)
  • Metrics & real data: ChartMogul, ProfitWell/Paddle, Baremetrics
  • Founder voice: The Bootstrapped Founder, SaaStr Daily

Two or three newsletters you actually open beats fifteen you archive on sight. Pick one strategic, one tactical, and stop there.

Which newsletter should you subscribe to for your role?

Different jobs need different newsletters. Here is the quick map before the detail, so you can subscribe to the two that fit you and skip the rest.

Best retention newsletter by role A mapping of roles to recommended newsletters. Founders: Lenny's Newsletter and The Bootstrapped Founder. Growth and PLG: Growth Unhinged and Elena Verna. Customer success: Sixteen Ventures. Finance and RevOps: ChartMogul, ProfitWell, and Baremetrics. Product managers: Lenny's Newsletter and Elena Verna. Which newsletter for your role FounderLenny's · The Bootstrapped Founder Growth / PLGGrowth Unhinged · Elena Verna Customer SuccessSixteen Ventures Finance / RevOpsChartMogul · ProfitWell · Baremetrics Product ManagerLenny's · Elena Verna Marketing / DemandSaaStr · Growth Unhinged Subscribe to the two that match you. Skip the rest until a specific question comes up. Then measure your own retention instead of reading a fifteenth take on it.

Strategy and growth newsletters

  • Lenny's Newsletter is the default for product and growth. Retention shows up constantly because Lenny treats it as the engine of growth, not a footnote. The headline essays are free; the archive and community are paid. Best all-round pick for founders and PMs.
  • Growth Unhinged by Kyle Poyar (formerly of OpenView) is the sharpest free newsletter on PLG, pricing, and expansion. If you liked OpenView's old PLG reports, this is where that thinking lives now.
  • Elena Verna writes bluntly about growth loops, activation, and monetization from years running growth at scale. Great counterweight to theory: she has actually shipped this stuff.
  • Andrew Chen is less frequent now but the archive on network effects, retention, and the "leaky bucket" is foundational reading.

Customer success newsletters

  • Sixteen Ventures by Lincoln Murphy is the old-school customer-success canon, heavy on the idea that engineered customer success drives retention. Dated design, durable ideas.
  • Gainsight and ChurnZero both run CS newsletters. Genuinely useful playbook content, but read them knowing the conclusion usually points at buying their category. If you are shopping, pair with our Gainsight alternatives and ChurnZero alternatives.

Metrics and real-data newsletters

Founder-voice newsletters

  • The Bootstrapped Founder by Arvid Kahl is retention-adjacent (audience, product, churn) from a bootstrapper's seat. Good for solo and small-team founders.
  • SaaStr Daily is Jason Lemkin's firehose. High volume, uneven depth, but the NRR and retention posts are blunt and benchmark-heavy in a useful way.
  • First Round Review is less a newsletter than a publication you get by email: long operator interviews, occasionally on retention, always from someone who did it.

Newsletters compared at a glance

NewsletterBest forFree / paid
Lenny's NewsletterProduct & growth strategyFree + paid tier
Growth UnhingedPLG, pricing, expansionFree
Elena VernaGrowth loops, activationFree + paid
Sixteen VenturesCustomer success philosophyFree
ChartMogulCohorts & metricsFree
ProfitWell / PaddleBenchmarks & pricing dataFree
BaremetricsTransparent real numbersFree
The Bootstrapped FounderSolo/bootstrapped foundersFree

Reading is not the work. These newsletters are worth a few hours a month to keep a mental model current. After that, the return on a fifteenth newsletter is far lower than the return on shipping one retention experiment.

If you only subscribe to three

  1. Lenny's Newsletter for the strategic frame, so you do not optimize a save flow while ignoring the activation problem underneath it.
  2. Growth Unhinged for the PLG, pricing, and expansion tactics you can actually run.
  3. One data source (ChartMogul or ProfitWell/Paddle) so your instincts stay anchored to real benchmarks.

Where to start once you have read enough

If you want the broader list of blogs and data sources, not just newsletters, see the 20 best churn and retention resources. And when you are ready to stop reading and act, the fastest next step is to find your own weakest retention lever: take the Churn Health Check. It scores your setup in about 60 seconds and tells you what to fix first, which usually beats one more newsletter.

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Frequently asked questions

Answers to the questions I get most often about this topic.

What is the best newsletter for learning SaaS retention?
For the strategic frame, Lenny's Newsletter is the default because it treats retention as the core of growth rather than a side topic. For the growth-and-metrics angle, Kyle Poyar's Growth Unhinged and Elena Verna's writing are the sharpest. For customer-success specifically, Lincoln Murphy at Sixteen Ventures is the old-school canon. Most people should subscribe to one strategic newsletter and one tactical one rather than a dozen they never open.

Are paid newsletters like Lenny's worth it?
For most operators the free tier of Lenny's Newsletter is enough, since the headline essays are free and only the archive and community sit behind the paywall. The paid tier is worth it if product or growth is your full-time job and you will actually use the community and back catalog. If you just want a weekly idea in your inbox, stay on the free lists and save the money.

What newsletter should a customer success leader subscribe to?
Start with Sixteen Ventures (Lincoln Murphy) for the success-drives-retention philosophy, and pair it with a metrics-oriented one like the ChartMogul or ProfitWell/Paddle content for the numbers side. The CS platform blogs (Gainsight, ChurnZero) also run newsletters, but read those knowing they are content marketing that points toward buying their category of tool.

How many retention newsletters should I actually subscribe to?
Two or three you read beats fifteen you archive unread. A realistic setup is one strategic newsletter (Lenny's or Growth Unhinged), one customer-success or metrics one, and maybe one founder-voice newsletter for morale. Beyond that you get diminishing returns and a cluttered inbox. Reading a fourth newsletter has far lower payoff than acting on what the first three already told you.

What is the best free newsletter for reducing churn?
Growth Unhinged (Kyle Poyar) and Lenny's Newsletter free tier are the strongest free options for the strategy and growth side, and the ProfitWell/Paddle data content is the best free source for benchmarks. All are free to read. If you want something you can act on today rather than read about, a free diagnostic like the ChurnTools Health Check tells you which retention lever to pull first.

Which newsletter is best for product-led growth and activation?
For PLG and activation specifically, Elena Verna's newsletter and Kyle Poyar's Growth Unhinged are the two to read, since both come out of the OpenView-era PLG world and focus on self-serve growth, activation, and expansion. Lenny's also covers activation heavily. Pair any of them with a behavioral-analytics habit so you are measuring activation, not just reading about it.

Do the analytics companies (ChartMogul, Baremetrics) have good newsletters?
Yes, and they are underrated. ChartMogul and Baremetrics both send newsletters heavy on real subscription data and metric how-tos, which is more concrete than most opinion newsletters. They are also less salesy than the big CS platform newsletters. If you like learning from actual numbers rather than takes, these two are worth the inbox space.
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MA

Written by Mark Ashworth

Founder of ChurnTools. I spend my time studying how SaaS companies lose customers and building tools to help them stop. Previously worked in SaaS growth and retention across multiple B2B products. I also write about growth and answer-engine optimization (AEO) at growthpigeon.com.

@growth_pigeon growthpigeon.com LinkedIn
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