Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service • Hacker News Board

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#21

Post by DXL » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 12:46 PM UTC

Jabbles wrote: post #14

jonknee wrote: post #4

If it works like they say, this is a godsend. Email is a royal pain and the pricing of SES is well below market rate. Postmark ( http://postmarkapp.com/ ) is similar and is $1.50 per thousand, compared to $.10 per thousand from Amazon.

Mailchimp appears to be offering unique emails from $5 per thousand! They appear to have significant discounts for emailing lists, but even at $12903 for 24.8 million emails, that's still $.52 per thousand. http://www.mailchimp.com/pricing Data transfer rates still apply for Amazon, but still... am I missing something?

You're missing the fact that Mailchimp offers an entire email marketing app whereas Amazon offers an email deliverability web service. They each have completely different features and are in a different market.

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#22

Post by jasonkester » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 12:46 PM UTC

scrrr wrote: post #6

I suppose this will hurt the competition, sites like sendgrid and mailchimp.

It might just help them. If Amazon just undercut their infrastructure costs, they can ditch their own servers and simply route mails through Amazon.

Regardless, MailChimp does a lot of stuff besides just sending mail. I suspect that most of its customers are there for the list management and campaign management pieces rather than just the .send() bit.

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#23

Post by eli » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 12:47 PM UTC

aristidb wrote: post #20

So I was immediately looking at their REST API... And true to form, Amazon adds yet another slightly incompatible request signing method. Consistency is for wimps.

I dare you to look at the API for some of the "traditional" email service providers. I've had the displeasure of working with a few from some of the big names and they are real DailyWTF material.

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#24

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 12:47 PM UTC

Jabbles wrote: post #14

jonknee wrote: post #4

If it works like they say, this is a godsend. Email is a royal pain and the pricing of SES is well below market rate. Postmark ( http://postmarkapp.com/ ) is similar and is $1.50 per thousand, compared to $.10 per thousand from Amazon.

Mailchimp appears to be offering unique emails from $5 per thousand! They appear to have significant discounts for emailing lists, but even at $12903 for 24.8 million emails, that's still $.52 per thousand. http://www.mailchimp.com/pricing Data transfer rates still apply for Amazon, but still... am I missing something?

[deleted]

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#25

Post by eli » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 12:49 PM UTC

leftnode wrote: post #16

I'm not so sure Sendgrid, Postmark, and other email senders should be shaking in their boots. There's plenty of other businesses that leverage AWS technology and resell it for a higher price. I bet they add AWS as an option as a value added reseller. If you have an existing email host integrated throughout your site, it might make more sense to just stick with them. It will force them to lower their prices though.

Agreed. I use Silverpop for high-volume sends even though I pretty sure they're just a front-end for PowerMTA

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#26

Post by kule » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 12:52 PM UTC

Jabbles wrote: post #14

jonknee wrote: post #4

If it works like they say, this is a godsend. Email is a royal pain and the pricing of SES is well below market rate. Postmark ( http://postmarkapp.com/ ) is similar and is $1.50 per thousand, compared to $.10 per thousand from Amazon.

Mailchimp appears to be offering unique emails from $5 per thousand! They appear to have significant discounts for emailing lists, but even at $12903 for 24.8 million emails, that's still $.52 per thousand. http://www.mailchimp.com/pricing Data transfer rates still apply for Amazon, but still... am I missing something?

Yeah but don't forget you are buying MailChimps' UI for that too. It may not be the best but it's definitely usable for a non-technical user.

However for your own custom interface this is going to be the obvious choice.

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#27

Post by elvirs » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 12:53 PM UTC

considering the fact that 95% of all email is spam, the email service providers should implement a similar quota system to fight spam. actually it would be great if entire email ecosystem had something like this in its core.

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#28

Post by DanielBMarkham » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 12:53 PM UTC

I love what Amazon is doing with AWS, and I like this new service a lot. Plus I'm a happy customer.

But damn this is all getting very complicated. First they turn off email, so you have to find a provider, then they turn it back on, but you have to pay them. Looking at my AWS console, I've got 8 or 9 tabs on there -- each representing a little piece of what I might want in an app. Each has it's own help section with bunches of docs to read to get up to speed. Each has it's own forum category. Each has a usage policy.

Don't get me wrong -- it's all good stuff. But good luck trying to guestimate what kinds of prices you'll be paying. You're paying for data transfer in and out of the cloud, you're paying for disk storage, you're paying for a database, you're paying for basic email services, etc.

So I'm kind of stuck looking at the monthly bill and saying "Does this look about right?" instead of having some firm idea of what's going on without having to use a spreadsheet and 3 whiteboards. That's no good. It's probably completely acceptable for BigCorp, who has a guy dedicated to figuring all of this out and managing it, but I'm busy and pressed for time all I want is the big red button to push -- and a known price for pushing it.

I love what they're doing. Just wish they'd put a little more "simple" back into it, especially in terms of pricing and bundling.

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#29

Post by aristidb » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 12:56 PM UTC

eli wrote: post #23

aristidb wrote: post #20

So I was immediately looking at their REST API... And true to form, Amazon adds yet another slightly incompatible request signing method. Consistency is for wimps.

I dare you to look at the API for some of the "traditional" email service providers. I've had the displeasure of working with a few from some of the big names and they are real DailyWTF material.

The API does not seem to be bad, really. It's just not consistent with other AWS APIs, which would simplify writing language bindings for them.

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#30

Post by eli » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 1:09 PM UTC

Jabbles wrote: post #14

jonknee wrote: post #4

If it works like they say, this is a godsend. Email is a royal pain and the pricing of SES is well below market rate. Postmark ( http://postmarkapp.com/ ) is similar and is $1.50 per thousand, compared to $.10 per thousand from Amazon.

Mailchimp appears to be offering unique emails from $5 per thousand! They appear to have significant discounts for emailing lists, but even at $12903 for 24.8 million emails, that's still $.52 per thousand. http://www.mailchimp.com/pricing Data transfer rates still apply for Amazon, but still... am I missing something?

I really like Mailchimp, but it's just not geared for high-volume sending. If you were going to be sending into the millions, you would typically be looking at someone like Lyris or Silverpop.

Edit: Mailchimp does a really good job of holding your hand and providing support. Amazon SES does not even provide basic analytics like open rates and click tracking.