Two channels for the same announcement, and why the right answer is usually both — not one or the other.
A published changelog entry only helps the users who go looking for it. Most won't. The question worth asking isn't "where should I publish updates" — it's "how do the two channels I already have actually reach different people."
An embedded widget shows up while someone is already using your product — no extra click, no inbox to check. It catches the user who never subscribed to anything and never will, but who's sitting in your app right now. The trade-off is attention span: nobody reads a widget popup the way they'd read an email, so it works best for short, scannable entries rather than a detailed explanation. See In-app widget for how Buoylog's version works.
Email only reaches people who chose to subscribe, which is a smaller list — but it's a list of people who already said they want to hear from you. A weekly digest also solves a problem the widget doesn't: it batches several releases into one message instead of interrupting someone every time something small ships, which matters once you're publishing more than once a week.
They're not competing for the same attention. The widget catches people mid-session who never opted into anything; email respects people who did opt in and don't want to be interrupted mid-session. Running both isn't redundant — it's covering two different failure modes of the other channel.
Run both channels from one dashboard
Embed the widget and set up a digest in the same place you already publish releases.
Start free trial →Not every entry belongs in every channel. A one-line UI tweak is widget material; it doesn't need to interrupt someone's inbox. A breaking change probably deserves both, plus enough lead time that the email isn't the first time anyone hears about it. Deciding this per-entry, rather than defaulting everything to every channel, is what keeps either one from turning into noise.