Google App Engine Silently Stopped Sending Email 5 Weeks Ago

Post by Bhullnatik » Fri, Apr 15, 2016, 8:58 AM UTC

inopinatus wrote: post #83

jpatokal wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please remember that Google App Engine is entirely free up to (roughly) 5 million page views/month: https://cloud.google.com/appengine/kb/#quota If you're running production services, you should probably sign up for a paid support package, which have guaranteed response times down to 15 minutes: https://cloud.google.com/support/ Disclaimer: I work in Google Cloud Support.

I think this is a terrible attitude. I will never implement it in my own support model. People shouldn't have to pay me in order to report a bug in my system. Arguably I should pay them, because one report is the tip of an iceberg of silent affected customers. More often than not, what most people want is simply an acknowledgement. They're not seeking a bug bounty. And definitely not the brush-off you just gave the G…

Post by mrcncpt » Fri, Apr 15, 2016, 9:57 AM UTC

pritambarhate wrote: post #87

wastedhours wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 as well, after the changes to Mandrill recently, was looking for a new provider and can also recommend Mailgun (at least, for ease and configurability in set up and testing so far, not yet in production).

Yes, Mandrill should have kept the free quota after DKIM and SPF verification. Now, I will be trying out the competitors (Sendgrid and Mailgun) and if I find them at par with Mandrill then for paid projects, I might use them rather than Mandrill.

Post by markdown » Fri, Apr 15, 2016, 10:35 AM UTC

Godel_unicode wrote: post #62

markdown wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sending is a bug when it's undocumented, when it happens without notification, when there's no error message, and when there's no outgoing-spam bin. The GAE docs say "do x and we'll send your mail". If we do x and mail isn't sent, then that is a problem.

Except as soon as you tell the spammer what is blocked and what isn't, they just add that to the playbook. I agree with you that some measure of notification that there's spam filtering would be good, but it's Google we're talking about. There's spam filtering.

Post by zymhan » Fri, Apr 15, 2016, 11:48 AM UTC

awjr wrote: post #81

markdown wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5 weeks ago your infrastructure stopped sending out mail. Our apps didn't change, your infrastructure did. Whether it's your outgoing spam filter that's overzealous, or if a datacenter is on fire is irrelevant. Your infrastructure stopped doing what your docs said it would. Paying customers like myself have apps running on your infrastructure. Your infrastructure stopped delivering the exact same emails that it had b…

I really have to highlight how dangerous an approach this is. You have no idea if the previous user of that IP was spamming. You should seriously consider mailgun or sendgrid. They also bring a lot of features that enable you to track when an email was read etc.

Post by metachris » Fri, Apr 15, 2016, 12:27 PM UTC

brianmcconnell wrote: post #72

cramsdale wrote: post #65

Hey Folks, The issue reported here is linked to App Engine and Gmail tightening up their spam filters. The root cause was an increase in organizations sharding out their spam systems to utilize App Engine’s free tier in such a way that is (a) in direct violation of our ToS and (b) making all of our lives suck a bit more (raise your hand if you want spam). It’s unfortunate that while App Engine is trying to provide a…

Long time App Engine user here. If you're sending email as part of your app, I'd recommend using Mailgun (or similar services). You can set up DKIM, inbound routes, etc, and generally have more control over how your mail is processed. I never got the impression App Engine really wanted to be in the email delivery business, so if that's important to you, there are tools that are focused on that (and free up to a month…