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

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

#21
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.

And if the third party service goes down, you're SOL -- there's nothing you can do to fix the issue, and it's your users who are suffering. What's your answer when a customer says "my emails aren't getting through, please fix it" and you...can't?

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

#22
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.

What is your emails bounce rates etc? Or is it caused by others using those same IPs too?

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

#23
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And if the third party service goes down, you're SOL -- there's nothing you can do to fix the issue, and it's your users who are suffering. What's your answer when a customer says "my emails aren't getting through, please fix it" and you...can't?

This is a major risk of outsourcing part of your operations. You probably shouldn't do this to the core of your business, as you lose control over problems. But sending marketing e-mails usually is not the core of business, unless one is selling the service of sending e-mails.

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

#24
post #3

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

Sendgrid gives you dedicated IPs so you are responsible for your own reputation. When you start out using it you might start on a low reputation depending on what the person on that IP did before.

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

#25
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.

Interesting. I have never seen those issues, and have been using MG for quite a few years, for many clients.

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

#26
Sounds interesting. I have been looking for a proper mail Server for sending marketing only for a while now.

I'll wait for the doc to update but until then :

Does it do things like IP rotation?

Is it using postfix at the backend or its a complete mail Server

What kind of list management features does it have? (i am looking to compare with interspire)

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

#28
post #20

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.

> 20/mo as this is cheaper by several magnitudes than the self-hosting option.

exactly this, even the cheapest cloud instances cost around 100$/m, while some might be 20$/m it's just not worth the effort to host your own because it also needs management/maintenance if you do which translates in to hours of work. Yes you can automate these things but it simply not worth it when the only thing you want to do is sent mass emails, without even caring about anything besides configuration to connect to XYZ service.

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

#29
post #3

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

From personal experience, if you're not jumping straight from no emails to a million an hour, your mail setup is good (SPF/DKIM/etc), you're not reusing a IP address that was sending spam last week (so be wary sending from cloud servers), and you aren't actually sending spam, then you can send from your own infrastructure just fine.

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

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Interesting. I have never seen those issues, and have been using MG for quite a few years, for many clients.

Same here. I've moved away from paying for a dedicated IP because it seemed a bit redundant.
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