What tools are out there to create a personal private newsletter?

I'd like to create a personal newsletter. I'm a bit inspired by the success of Substack and Revue, however, there wouldn't be any type of monetization. Instead, the goal would be to easily gatekeep so that only those I know receive the issues which contain private thoughts.

I'd ideally like to have a landing page where my friends can come and sign up, and once they do I can approve them to receive the newsletter issues.

The goal would be to have a way to share family news as seamlessly as possible without using Facebook.

Is there a tool out there that caters to this kind of idea that you know of? Or would I have to shoehorn my use case into Mailchimp or send emails manually?