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Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

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Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#121

Post by Travis »

tedunangst wrote: post #83
fooandbarify wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would legitimate use be falsely flagged as spam in large numbers? Other than a malicious conspiracy of some sort, I don't understand why a disproportionate number of e-mail recipients would target legitimate mail as spam. Am I missing something?

People sign up. People get tired of your email. Clicking spam is easier than clicking unsubscribe (which people are also taught not to click on). Both AOL and Yahoo have been pretty aggressive about banning mail servers that send too much "spam", which in several cases was a legitimate mailing list people had to ask to subscribe to.

I've seen some aggressive stuff out of Excite, as well (although I only know a few people who use them).

One other reason someone might hit "Report Spam" rather than unsubscribe: your unsubscribe page requires an account login (rather than unique hash) to unsub. If I can't remember that login, and I'm exasperated by the company already, I'll hit the Report Spam button just b/c it's so much easier.

Email unsubscribes that are behind login screens are the devil.

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#122

Post by charlesju »

sofuture wrote: post #58
kevin_morrill wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a white labeling opportunity. Though I am not sure if their TOS allows it.

See: Heroku AWS is awesome for exactly that reason, one can build a more integrated package on top of the individual parts and sell it.

Or dropbox...

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#123

Post by charlesju »

jgilliam wrote: post #110
markessien wrote: post #7

Sendgrid & other such senders will be shaking in their shoes now. Personally, as soon as I have more time, I'll switch to the amazon service. Also, any new app I make will use Amazons service by default. Sending email out is quite important for growth, and such services really help businesses. What impresses me about amazon is that they are not looking at what the competition is charging or trying to charge high base…

Sendgrid is half as expensive once you get beyond sending a handful of emails. $.005 vs $.01 I am a sendgrid customer, and unless Amazon is cheaper and can solve the deliverability issues, there is no way I'm switching.

Amazon is $0.10 per 1 thousand emails.

Sendgrid is $0.00045 at the highest tier which is $0.45 for 1 thousand.

That means Amazon is much cheaper even at Sendgrid's highest tier, further, it's much cheaper at the lowest tiers as well.

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#124

Post by blhack »

I want to be excited about this, but amazon basically destroyed any trust I had in them (at least the people that handle AWS). I signed up for the amazon free usage tier of AWS, excited to try it out, and really really loving amazon for doing something like that (giving away service for free).

I signed up, spun up an EC2 instance (careful to make sure that this really was free), checked it out for a few minutes, then moved back to my linode and slicehost boxen. I was excited to have another spare machine to try stuff out on for the next year (I really wanted to try nginx as a reverse proxy).

About a month later, I got a bill for $60 from amazon. I tried to find a support chat for AWS (like what slicehost has), but couldn't...tried to find a way of calling them...but couldn't. Finally I sent them some sort of feedback saying "Hey, was this a mistake? Why are you billing me for something that is free?"

The response that I got back was something like "The cost for AWS is $60/mo! Thanks for using AWS!"

To me, this is absurd, and is borderline fraudulent (although I'm sure it was a mistake). Luckily for me, I have a good job, and while eating $60 worth of amazon making a mistake is annoying, it isn't a catastrophe. This wouldn't have been true for me while I was in school though, and wouldn't be true for some of the friends I recommended give AWS a try.

I'm starting to think that stuff like this is where "the cloud" falls apart on people. If I have a problem with my Verizon Business internet, I can call them and talk to somebody until it's fixed. If I have a problem with one of our AT&T telephones, same thing. If the power goes out at our building, I can call down to APS and find out why.

From what I can gather, this absolutely isn't true for google, or amazon, or any of the other "cloud" providers. If I build an email system myself, buy bandwidth/power/rackspace from a colo myself, and manage it myself, there aren't going to be any surprises. If it goes down, I can just look at why. Nobody is going to surprise me with a bill (except maybe the colo).

To be honest, amazon, I don't even plan on building anything on your platform...ever. Same goes for you, google. While I really really love the idea of cloud computering (or elastic computering), I definitely don't love the idea of some faceless company with no customer service of any kind who can arbitrarily just take money from me and doesn't care if I leave.

To me, stuff like this is a massive step backwards.

While not related to AWS, but more "the cloud" in general...look at what happened a few months ago when facebook's OAuth system bailed out for a few hours. Anybody dependent on facebook for login handling was simply SoL without really anything that they could do to solve the problem until facebook fixed it.

How is this desirable?

There was an article here yesterday (an it seems like something like this pops up just about every week) about how the days of the system admin are over. I wouldn't be so sure. You can yell at system admins until you feel better, you can call them endlessly at 3:00am until they wake up, you can tell them that they have to come in to the office RIGHT NOW and fix it RIGHT NOW. (I'm a sys admin, btw)

You can't do this to amazon, you can't do this to google. If amazon email service bails out...sorry, but call back later and maybe it will be fixed.

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#125

Post by Travis »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #28

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…

On the other hand, because of the utility-based charges, you can run tests for a week or two if you'd like.

Also, it sounds like what you're looking for is basically a calculator on top of the service -- are there really no decent calculators online?

I think Elastic Beanstalk is intended to reduce much of this complexity, as well. Want your app to just scale? clicks on EBeanstalk.

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#126

Post by corin_ »

detst wrote: post #52
ez77 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could anyone explain the usage of 'white label' here? The Wikipedia entry (+) doesn't help this foreign speaker. (+) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-label_product

"White label" in this context would basically be a middleman. Customer pays the white label for the AWS services and the white label pays AWS. The white label would obviously have to offer something of value and in this discussion, that value would be predictable pricing and maybe simplification of the services.

Actually white label doesn't quite describe it correctly, as white label is normally just that - a relabelling.

Typically, in addition to releasing it as a different brand for the same services, pricing might be altered, customer service would be seperate, different marketing, and so on. It's not a term designed for creating a new service that happens to use AWS underneath it.

(Depending on how much the "simplification of the services" changes the AWS offering, maybe I'm being pedantic, but maybe not. Dropbox, for example, is not a white label solution, it's a completely seperate example, even if it 100% uses AWS services.)

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#127

Post by corin_ »

blhack wrote: post #124

I want to be excited about this, but amazon basically destroyed any trust I had in them (at least the people that handle AWS). I signed up for the amazon free usage tier of AWS, excited to try it out, and really really loving amazon for doing something like that (giving away service for free). I signed up, spun up an EC2 instance (careful to make sure that this really was free), checked it out for a few minutes, then…

  Why are you billing me for something that is free?
Can't really respond to that, though as a paying customer, and someone who knows many people who've used the free tier, I would imagine it was a mistake on your end, although maybe they should have been more clear on Ts&Cs or something. Hard to say without knowing more.

  or any of the other "cloud" providers
Google are (in)famous for that problem, AWS I can't honestly say I have any experience with it. But don't just assume it's because they are "cloud" providers. Actually, it's because they are huge companies that, thanks to the (usual) efficiency of their products, can pretty much get away with it.

You say you use Linode and Slicehost, their services are the same as Amazon's EC2, yet you presumably know that their support is pretty great.

I've been testing PHPfog recently and their support, even in beta while I've been paying nothing to use them, has been excellent.

Examples go on and on... it's about the specific companies, not the type of service.

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#128

Post by tybris »

astrodust wrote: post #94
tybris wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, except in code quality.

There's some awfully shady Java code out there, but since it looks impressive with all those abstract bases and factories you can't see the real problems. A 12,0000 line Java program with the same features and the same bugs as a 500 line Perl script is going to look clean in comparison even though it's just as crappy.

Sure, but in case of Perl the shady code is on a big pile with the good code. In Java you have projects like Apache commons that generally produce fairly good code as long as you steer clear of the experimental stuff.

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#129

Post by blhack »

corin_ wrote: post #127
blhack wrote: post #124

I want to be excited about this, but amazon basically destroyed any trust I had in them (at least the people that handle AWS). I signed up for the amazon free usage tier of AWS, excited to try it out, and really really loving amazon for doing something like that (giving away service for free). I signed up, spun up an EC2 instance (careful to make sure that this really was free), checked it out for a few minutes, then…

Why are you billing me for something that is free? Can't really respond to that, though as a paying customer, and someone who knows many people who've used the free tier, I would imagine it was a mistake on your end, although maybe they should have been more clear on Ts&Cs or something. Hard to say without knowing more. or any of the other "cloud" providers Google are (in)famous for that problem, AWS I can't honestly…

>AWS I can't honestly say I have any experience with it.

I can honestly say because I do have experience with it. Maybe it was something I clicked, but that is classic bait and switch. I would have never even considered AWS if it wasn't free and definitely didn't intentionally buy anything from them (as I said, I already have linode and slicehost, which is more than I need).

I'm not sure where you're going with this. I'm not saying that absolutely every cloud services provider is terrible, I'm saying that my perception of google, and my experience with amazon, is that they are.

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