Postal: Open source mail delivery platform, alternative to Mailgun or Sendgrid • Hacker News Board

Re: Postal: Open source mail delivery platform, alternative to Mailgun or Sendgrid

#11

Post by ksajadi » Wed, Apr 26, 2017, 9:53 AM UTC

We sent a lot of emails which makes services like Postmark or Mandrill very expensive. Since switching to Amazon SES, the cost has been much lower but the lack of individual email tracking has been a pain (in case a recipient claims they haven't received it or we need to track opens, etc).

This UI with an Amazon SES backend would be ideal.

Re: Postal: Open source mail delivery platform, alternative to Mailgun or Sendgrid

#12

Post by michaelbrooks » Wed, Apr 26, 2017, 9:58 AM UTC

dan1234 wrote: post #3

Isn’t part of the reason for using Mailgun, Sendgrid etc that you get to send via IP addresses with good reputation?

For me, it's more the support you get from using third party APIs. It's nice to break away from companies to a certain extent, but if you need help/support you only have yourself to fix the issue. If you go with a third party and something happens, you can go to them for a solution.

Re: Postal: Open source mail delivery platform, alternative to Mailgun or Sendgrid

#13

Post by Doches » Wed, Apr 26, 2017, 10:00 AM UTC

madspindel wrote: post #7

This project fails to answer the question 'Why?'.

It's a self-hosted alternative to transactional email PaaS providers. Literally the second sentence in the README:

> Think Sendgrid, Mailgun or Postmark but open source and ready for you to run on your own servers.

Your comment fails to answer the question: "Did this HN user even RTFT(itle)?"

Re: Postal: Open source mail delivery platform, alternative to Mailgun or Sendgrid

#14

Post by richardkeller » Wed, Apr 26, 2017, 10:00 AM UTC

madspindel wrote: post #7

This project fails to answer the question 'Why?'.

Assuming it has an API, I would prefer to use this over a service such as Mailgun. We used to have our own mail server, but without an easy API to get deliverability details per mail, we ended up switching to Mailgun. Since the switch, our deliverability has nosedived (we're currently not paying for a dedicated IP though) and mails are constantly bouncing due to the low reputation of Mailgun's shared IPs.

Mailgun's 30-day retention period is also a bit absurd, since most of our clients require mail audit trails in the region of 6-12 months.

Re: Postal: Open source mail delivery platform, alternative to Mailgun or Sendgrid

#15

Post by icebraining » Wed, Apr 26, 2017, 10:03 AM UTC

ksajadi wrote: post #11

We sent a lot of emails which makes services like Postmark or Mandrill very expensive. Since switching to Amazon SES, the cost has been much lower but the lack of individual email tracking has been a pain (in case a recipient claims they haven't received it or we need to track opens, etc). This UI with an Amazon SES backend would be ideal.

Since it uses SMTP anyway, shouldn't be too hard to allow it to use SES as a smart host.

Re: Postal: Open source mail delivery platform, alternative to Mailgun or Sendgrid

#16

Post by richardkeller » Wed, Apr 26, 2017, 10:04 AM UTC

dan1234 wrote: post #3

Isn’t part of the reason for using Mailgun, Sendgrid etc that you get to send via IP addresses with good reputation?

Unfortunately, unless you're paying for a dedicated IP address with Mailgun, their sender reputation is mostly quite bad. We are constantly having to request our account to be moved to a new IP due to them landing up in some blacklist.

Re: Postal: Open source mail delivery platform, alternative to Mailgun or Sendgrid

#17

Post by blowski » Wed, Apr 26, 2017, 10:06 AM UTC

Doches wrote: post #13

madspindel wrote: post #7

This project fails to answer the question 'Why?'.

It's a self-hosted alternative to transactional email PaaS providers. Literally the second sentence in the README: > Think Sendgrid, Mailgun or Postmark but open source and ready for you to run on your own servers. Your comment fails to answer the question: "Did this HN user even RTFT(itle)?"

That's just begging the question. What's the advantage of running on your own servers vs using SendGrid?

Re: Postal: Open source mail delivery platform, alternative to Mailgun or Sendgrid

#18

Post by dan1234 » Wed, Apr 26, 2017, 10:07 AM UTC

ksajadi wrote: post #11

We sent a lot of emails which makes services like Postmark or Mandrill very expensive. Since switching to Amazon SES, the cost has been much lower but the lack of individual email tracking has been a pain (in case a recipient claims they haven't received it or we need to track opens, etc). This UI with an Amazon SES backend would be ideal.

If you’re sending newsletters, you might want to look at Sendy[1] (no affiliation), which sends via SES.

1 https://sendy.co

Re: Postal: Open source mail delivery platform, alternative to Mailgun or Sendgrid

#19

Post by Doches » Wed, Apr 26, 2017, 10:11 AM UTC

blowski wrote: post #17

Doches wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a self-hosted alternative to transactional email PaaS providers. Literally the second sentence in the README: > Think Sendgrid, Mailgun or Postmark but open source and ready for you to run on your own servers. Your comment fails to answer the question: "Did this HN user even RTFT(itle)?"

That's just begging the question. What's the advantage of running on your own servers vs using SendGrid?

Fair. To a certain mindset, "self-hosted" is its own advantage -- but to pick a couple of advantages out of thin air:

   + Free: I can run Postal on my own hardware, with no usage limits or costs other than the VPS or AWS costs (which I'm paying anyway)
   + Independent: I'm not relying on a third-party to provide core features. If SendGrid goes down there's nothing I can do about it
   + Private: Maybe I don't want to hand over a list of my user's email addresses to SendGrid.

Self-hosting services means I maintain control over them. It's a tradeoff, and you may value control less than, say, convenience. YMMV.

Re: Postal: Open source mail delivery platform, alternative to Mailgun or Sendgrid

#20

Post by nbevans » Wed, Apr 26, 2017, 10:14 AM UTC

The reason why we use Mailgun is to avoid deploying and maintaining e-mail infrastructure which is very hard and high cost. We would rather keep paying Mailgun about $20/mo as this is cheaper by several magnitudes than the self-hosting option.