Two $20 subscriptions, two jobs—here's which to keep
The coffee’s gone cold in the mug beside your keyboard, the cursor blinks in an empty draft, and somewhere between three browser tabs you’ve lost the thread of what you were researching twenty minutes ago.
Perplexity Pro and ChatGPT Plus both cost $20—but they do opposite things
One finds answers you don’t know exist; the other builds with answers you already have.
You’re paying $20 a month for ChatGPT Plus because you need to draft emails, rewrite headlines, generate outlines, and occasionally ask it to turn a messy voice note into a coherent article structure. You’re considering Perplexity Pro because you’re tired of Googling for twenty minutes to answer a single question—like whether Mailchimp’s API supports conditional logic in automations, or which WordPress host actually delivers sub-500ms TTFB on a $30 plan.
Here’s the decision: ChatGPT Plus is a drafting assistant. Perplexity Pro is a research assistant. ChatGPT synthesises what you give it. Perplexity finds what you don’t yet have. If you’re writing three newsletters a week, interviewing tools for a comparison post, or trying to fact-check a claim before you publish it, Perplexity saves you the tab-switching. It pulls from live sources, cites them inline, and lets you follow up without retyping context. ChatGPT rewrites, expands, and structures—but it doesn’t go looking.
The full breakdown covers when each tool earns its $20, which one to keep if you can only afford one, and the three workflows where paying for both makes sense. If you’ve been running both subscriptions and wondering whether you’re doubling up, or if you’ve been white-knuckling it with free ChatGPT and wishing it would just find the answer instead of making you feed it sources, this is the article.
TACTIC
The thirty-second SEO check before you hit publish
Before you schedule a post, paste the headline into Google and scan the first page. If you see three identical angles from bigger sites published in the past month, your piece will vanish. If you see outdated threads, Reddit discussions, or one dominant post from 2019, you’ve found a gap. The tactic isn’t keyword research—it’s competitive triage. If the top five results don’t answer the question your reader typed, yours will. This takes less time than writing a meta description and tells you whether the post has a chance before you promote it.
READER QUESTION
What to do when your welcome email gets 60% opens but zero replies
A reader writes: “My welcome email hits 62% opens, but nobody replies. I ask them to hit reply and tell me what they want to read. Crickets.” The problem isn’t the ask—it’s the timing. Your new subscriber just gave you their email because they wanted something specific: a lead magnet, a content upgrade, a promised checklist. They’re not thinking about what they want next week; they’re thinking about what they signed up for three seconds ago. Deliver that first. Ask for the reply in email two or three, after they’ve seen you’re worth talking to. Front-loading the ask feels like a survey before the appetiser arrives.
WORTH READING
Why MailerLite’s new pricing still beats Mailchimp’s free plan
MailerLite dropped its free tier from 1,000 contacts to 500 in April 2026, the same month Mailchimp cut its free plan to 250 contacts. Even at 500, MailerLite gives you automations, a drag-and-drop builder, and no daily send limits. Mailchimp’s free plan caps you at 500 sends per day and strips out segmentation. If you’re between 250 and 500 subscribers and you’re still on Mailchimp free, you’re paying in friction. The migration takes an afternoon: export your list, import to MailerLite, rebuild your welcome automation, update your embed forms. You’ll spend four hours now to save four hours a month in workarounds.
Know someone who would like this? Forward today’s email—every operator we reach is one closer to running an online business with a little less friction.