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The System Design Newsletter
@systemdesignone Newsletter on Substack
Takes sponsors. Estimate $2,500 to $18,800 for one dedicated send.
Open on Substack 3 to check How to reach them
average reach a post Substack publishes no view counts, so there is no reach figure here.
free subscribers 251,000 From Substack's own API. Read Sep 4, 2026.
posts every 4 days across 10 recent posts
last posted 4d ago Read Sep 4, 2026.
Recent post performance
Likes on their last 10 posts
Average likes53
LikesAverage
Jul 29, 2026 to Sep 3, 2026. Oldest to newest.
View post data10 posts
| Post | Date | Likes | Promotion flag |
|---|---|---|---|
| What You Need to Master (And Avoid) to Build Fast, Reliable, and Scalable APIs | 35 | Not flagged | |
| Vertical Small LLMs: A Deep Dive | 43 | Not flagged | |
| 10 System Design Solutions Explained in 15 Minutes | 59 | Not flagged | |
| How to Build an AI Research Agent | 47 | Not flagged | |
| Prompt Engineering - A Deep Dive | 39 | Not flagged | |
| How to Build AI Agents That Don’t Start Over When They Fail | 56 | Not flagged | |
| Fine Tuning: A Deep Dive | 25 | Not flagged | |
| How CI/CD Works - A Deep Dive | 117 | Not flagged | |
| I struggled with “API testing” until I learned these 53 techniques | 64 | Not flagged | |
| 50 shades of system design | 48 | Not flagged |
Can you sponsor them?
Yes. Named Unblocked, Superblocks and 7 more as sponsors in posts.
They publish no price. That is normal here: rates are quoted on request.
Estimate $2,500 to $18,800 for one dedicated send
Ask them directly 251,000 subscribers x $10 to $75 per 1,000 subscribers (beehiiv, 29 May 2026). Benchmark: beehiiv, Newsletter sponsorship cost ↗. This is our arithmetic on a published benchmark, not a quote from the creator.
Specialised B2B lists often command more (beehiiv quotes $50 to $100+).
Who sponsors The System Design Newsletter?
9 documented sponsors: Unblocked, Superblocks, Svix, AWS and 5 more. Last read Sep 4, 2026.
Unblocked source Superblocks source Svix source AWS source Auth0 source Blitzy source CodeRabbit source Figma source Omnigraph source
Each name is read from the creator's own words in the post it links to. A tick means the platform also flagged that post as paid.
What we checked
21 checks, 9 passed, 3 to review
| ✓ | Metrics came from the platform | Every audience figure here is a value Substack's own API returned, never estimated or inferred. The price estimate is the one number we work out ourselves, and it is labelled and shows its arithmetic. | not published |
| ✓ | Enough recent posts to judge | 10 recent posts sampled (target 10). | not published |
| ✓ | Newsletter floor: ≥10,000 free subscribers and ≥20 median reactions | 251,000 free subscribers (Substack's own figure, not the author's claim), 48 median reactions across 10 recent issues. | required |
| – | Open rate | Nobody publishes a newsletter's open rate: not Substack, not the author. How many subscribers actually opened the email a sponsored slot sat in is unknown, and is not estimated here. The subscriber count is the size of the list, not the size of the audience. | not published |
| ! | A sponsored slot would reach the free list | 90% of recent issues went only to paying subscribers. A sponsorship reaches the free list, which sees the other 10%. | integrity |
| ✓ | Tech / dev / software engineering | 5 distinct dev signals in the bio and post text: devops, ci/cd, system design, testing, prompt engineering. | required |
| ✓ | Not a gaming channel | No gaming signal in the text. Substack publishes no content category, so this is a text judgement. | required |
| ✓ | Not a hardware / gear channel | No hardware/gear pattern. | preference |
| ! | Target region (US / UK / EU / AU / NZ / SG) | This account has left its location field empty. Region is unknown and must not be claimed. | required |
| ! | Reactions plausible for the subscriber count | 48 median reactions against 251,000 free subscribers is 0.019%. Reaction rates run low on newsletters, but this is low even for that. The list may be far less active than its size suggests. | integrity |
| – | Average is not one viral outlier | No view counts on this platform. | not published |
| – | Comment volume matches the view counts | Comment counts were not returned for this account. | not published |
| – | Reach plausible for the audience count | No view counts on this platform. | not published |
| ✓ | Posted recently | Last post 4 day(s) ago. | preference |
| ✓ | Publishes on a regular schedule | Median 4 day(s) between posts; the 10 sampled posts span 36 days. | preference |
| – | Sampled posts are recent enough to compare | Too few dated posts with counts to test whether the sample is comparable. | not published |
| – | Same numbers from two endpoints of the same API | No post from this account appeared in both the search index and the profile feed, so there was nothing to cross-check. | not published |
| – | Verified against the platform's own published feed | Substack publishes no independent public feed to check the API's numbers against. YouTube is the only platform here where that second source exists. | not published |
| ✓ | An independent creator, not a company's own channel | Nothing marks this as a company-run channel: it is not a known company account, the name carries no corporate designation, and the bio is not written in a company's voice. | required |
| – | Same person confirmed on other platforms | No other public profile was linked from this account, so this record covers one platform only. | not published |
| – | Runs paid promotions (platform-declared) | Sponsorships shown for this creator are parsed from the text of their own post descriptions, so they are suspected rather than platform-confirmed. | not published |