There’s a lot happening in tech every day, minute, and hour: exciting new products, emerging security threats, and better ways of doing things that will increase your productivity. Keeping on top of it all is difficult, and you don’t want to miss an important event or product that could have proved beneficial.
Forums and chat channels are a great way to get up-to-the minute news, but you need to sleep sometimes (and can’t catch every news piece as it happens), so we’ve assembled this list of 20 top IT newsletters that summarize and regularly deliver all of the news, product launches, and best practices for important tech topics in 2024.
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What are the best IT newsletters?
Our criteria for selecting the top tech newsletters include their relevance, whether they are frequently updated, their industry reputation and the reliability of the news they provide, and how large their audience is (low quality newsletters aren’t going to grab a big following from programmers and tech professionals who are already short on spare time). Here’s what we’ve picked.
1. CyberSecurity: Krebs on Security
Brian Krebs is an authority on all things security, with a good reputation for delivering high quality insights into IT cybersecurity. He’s written thousands of articles on the topic, and his Krebs on Security website and newsletter provides regular updates that will keep you informed about cybersecurity issues and emerging threats, and also includes an active comments section for discussions with other IT professionals.
2. Cloud computing: AWS TechAction and Google Cloud
Sometimes it’s best to go straight to the source for product updates, news, and alerts. The AWS TechAction and Google Cloud newsletters keep you informed about the two most popular cloud ecosystems. While other tech blogs will regularly publish news about the cloud space in general, you should always subscribe to your vendor’s own channels so you can proactively adopt new products, implement best practices and apply cost-saving measures as soon as they are announced.
3. Artificial intelligence/machine learning: AI Weekly
As the name suggests, AI Weekly sends you a weekly newsletter summarizing the latest news in AI And Machine Learning, with links to news articles from across the internet. AI is the current hot topic across the IT industry, touching on everything from content creation to threat management, and it pays to keep an eye out for new AI powered tools that can streamline (or eliminate) costly business processes.
4. Data science and analytics: Data Science Weekly
Data Science Weekly has over 60,000 subscribers on Substack and has over 500 issues so far. It recaps the week’s data science news, an important topic for those working in analytics who want to better understand their business environment and customer audience. By learning to leverage your business and customer data, you can improve your products, increase customer success, and improve your overall business outcomes.
5. Programming: The Polymathic Engineer
Fernado Frank’s The Polymathic Engineer newsletter provides a weekly article about computer science, ranging from topics like math and the cloud, to explaining programming concepts like sorting, queueing, and pagination, and technologies like containerization and APIs.
The variety of topics keeps this newsletter interesting, and it makes for good reading during your commute if you want a quick weekly refresher on programming concepts and best practices.
6. Digital marketing: Marketing Examined
Whether you’re in business-to-business (B2B) or you sell software products to consumers, the success of your technology product depends on effective marketing. Marketing Examined focuses on growth marketing — a marketing concept that focuses on customer satisfaction and improving the product based on user feedback to both your marketing campaigns and your product features. These ideas are also useful in other IT fields: happy users who feel their feedback is being considered are a lot easier to deal with on the helpdesk.
7. Databases and big data: Big Data News Weekly
There’s probably more going on in the field of databases than you think there is. Relational databases like MySQL and PostgreSQL are stalwarts, but there are also highly scalable database solutions like Snowflake, real-time data storage like Redis, and streaming data platforms like Apache Kafka to consider.
Big Data News Weekly keeps you up-to-date on the latest database technologies so you can choose the right data tools for your specific application.
8. Web and mobile development: Frontend Focus
Successful apps need to focus on the user experience. Frontend Focus sends you a weekly newsletter containing news and tips for building first-class websites and mobile apps. It provides information about everything from recent browser updates to CSS best practices, JavaScript, and user interface design. Even internal business tools can benefit from a bit of design panache that makes them easier and more pleasant for users.
9. IT leadership: Pointer
Pointer bills itself as ‘What current & future engineering leaders read’. It has a readership of software developers and CTOs and is published by experienced developers who supply practical programming tips, as well as news on current software industry trends.
10. Privacy and regulation: Privacy Insider Newsletter
If you handle any kind of user or customer data, you must comply with both their local data privacy regulations and those where your business is based. Non-compliance with regulations such as GDPR and CCPA (as well as HIPAA in healthcare) can result in hefty fines and other repercussions for your business, so it’s worthwhile keeping up-to-date with the latest regulations you may need to adhere to.
The Privacy Insider Newsletter is a valuable resource for IT professionals who want to make sure that they are aware of all of their legal responsibilities surrounding sensitive data.
11. DevOps: FAUN
Productive (and happy) developers need the right toolchains to be able to effectively and efficiently create great applications. FAUN is both an email newsletter with the latest in DevOps news, tools, and best practices, as well as a growing community of developers sharing their stories. Interestingly, you’re able to share the specific tools, languages, and platforms that you’re using and see what other products developers are adopting for their own use-cases.
12. Windows/Microsoft: Microsoft.Source
There are many IT professional resources for the Microsoft ecosystem, but you want the information that you use to action business-critical infrastructure decisions first-hand. If you’re committed to the Microsoft ecosystem, be it Windows (and Active Directory), Office365, or Azure for your cloud operations, the Microsoft.Source newsletter is worth adding to your subscription list.
13. Linux and open source: The FOSS Weekly Newsletter
Open source powers the modern enterprise (whether you use it directly or not). It’s FOSS provides a weekly roundup newsletter of all things Linux and open source from their regularly published news articles. This includes updates and features announcements, new apps, recommendations, and learning resources. There’s also an active community of OSS enthusiasts and a website section with Linux tutorials and guides.
14. Apple, iOS, and Mac
Subscribe to AppleInsider if you’re interested in the Apple ecosystem, including iOS devices (iPhones and iPads) and Macs. Even if you aren’t a Mac user, it can be interesting to see what’s happening on the other side of the fence, and given the prevalence of Apple devices for personal use and the growing trend of BYOD in business, knowing about any recent issues facing the platform (like broken updates or new features that may present a security risk) can be valuable.
15. Startups: TechCrunch
Stay ahead of the competition by getting the latest news on startups and new technologies from TechCrunch. This popular news site offers newsletters with the latest IT trends and new products. If you’re an end user you can keep tabs on what’s next in the tech industry so that you can make sure you’re using the latest and greatest products and technologies, or if you’re a developer or CTO, make sure that you’re working in the right direction.
16. Technology news: TLDR
Tech insights from TLDR include everything from breaking IT news to stories about scientific breakthroughs, tech sales and offers, programming, and the cloud. TLDR covers technology in broad (and covers many of the topics listed in this article), and is a great leisurely read if you want a more varied daily tech news digest.
17. New tools, apps, and website discovery: Internet is Beautiful
There are a lot of ‘hidden gems’ on the internet — from cool websites to useful apps and workflows that you can adopt — but finding them can be increasingly difficult with the rise of SEO. Online forums are a great source to see what others have found, and Internet is Beautiful collects them into a newsletter containing the latest productivity tools, web gadgets, interesting websites, news, and communities, and tech resources, delivered to your inbox weekly.
18. Data Center and networking: Data Centre Magazine
While the cloud offers many benefits for hosting IT infrastructure, on-premises systems and colocation data centers are still chosen by many organizations with requirements that are not met by the cloud for technical, practical, or regulatory reasons.
Data Centre Magazine offers news, interviews, and editorials, keeping you abreast of the latest data center technologies, providers, strategies, and use cases.
19. Futurism: Futurism
What’s next? That’s the question Futurism tries to answer. If you’re looking for some tech-related reading that’s a little less dry and business-oriented but still informative, Futurism is a worthy addition to your subscription list. It covers weird science as well as emerging technologies and news and is popular with forward-thinkers in the industry who want to look at both the future of tech and consider the ‘what ifs’.
20. The most subscribed-to technology newsletter: The Pragmatic Engineer
We’ve saved the most popular for last. The Pragmatic Engineer is the #1 technology newsletter on Substack with hundreds of thousands of subscribers. It’s issued every Tuesday, and includes news about startups (as well as established big tech companies), IT trends, and actionable advice. It’s written by Gergely Orosz, an engineering manager who’s worked at the likes of Uber and Microsoft, so it comes with some authority.
The Pragmatic Engineer is reputable enough that they can also offer a paid subscription (that people will actually pay for), that includes additional long-form articles that take a detailed look at technology topics as well as resources and templates for engineers.
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How to choose the right IT newsletter for you
How do you cut through the noise and choose the best newsletters for IT industry updates that are relevant to you? You can scroll through the list of previous newsletter issues and see if the content is fresh and actually pertinent to your industry and the products you use, and maintain an exclusive list. Or, if you’re less organized, whenever you stumble on a useful post, subscribe to the publisher’s website, blog, or newsletter, and then periodically review your list and remove any that haven’t provided any interesting or actionable information in the last few months.
If you’re managing enterprise-scale infrastructure, be sure to subscribe to the NinjaOne newsletter, where we cover product news, events, and free resources for remote monitoring and management (RMM) products that help you secure and maintain your endpoints.
