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Mailgun (YC W11) Raises $1.1 Million For Its "Twilio For Email"

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Re: Mailgun (YC W11) Raises $1.1 Million For Its "Twilio For Email"

#41
post #37
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SES is extremely easy. Unless you actually care about deliverability. Deliverability on the modern internet is hard. SES does not handle this. If Mailgun handles deliverability well, that alone is worth the price. Making it programmable is awesome.

Amazon implements trust-based dynamic throttling and only allows verified email addresses. I don't think anyone else does both. Where's your evidence that anyone has better deliverability than SES?

Nobody can claim to sell you "better deliverability". It largely depends on 2 things, they are easy to understand:

1. Infrastructure. A lot goes into this, and you can Google what needs to be done, and do it yourself if you have the time.

2. Content quality. If your recipients keep flagging your mails as spam, nobody will help you - that's your responsibility not to spam people.

Myriads email sending services do #1. Mailgun, among many other things, does that too. Plus, we can give you a completely separated, dedicated setup where your reputation won't be affected by other senders (something SES can't promise you).

But in the end, you need to send something people want to read. Saying "email company X gives you automatic deliverability" is a bit like saying that "hosting company Y gives you automatic PageRank" :-) Yes, your emails will be 100% solid on protocol/format/rate level and the IP you're sending from is watched, but you'll be taken down if you're spamming.

Hope this helps. And if you need assistance regarding deliverability (on your own server, or with Mailgun) - shoot me an email at ev@mailgun.net BTW, this mailbox is hosted by Mailgun itself. see? we're eating our own dogfood here!

Re: Mailgun (YC W11) Raises $1.1 Million For Its "Twilio For Email"

#43

Would somebody care to sell me on why this is superior to SendGrid or Amazon Simple Email Service? (Or perhaps what use cases it better serves.)

Does a product have to always be superior to its competitors in order to exist?

No, but if it isn't, then why even bother launching it?

Re: Mailgun (YC W11) Raises $1.1 Million For Its "Twilio For Email"

#44
post #13

We've been using Mailgun for all of our email on http://lanyrd.com/ - sending messages via their REST API (and using them to receive bounces and email unsubscribe requests). It was easy to integrate and we haven't had any deliverability problems - they gave us plenty of great advice about that. I've spent a bunch of time talking to them about email, and they really know their stuff.

Your recommendation in a previous blog post made me sign up for their service and I have been a happy customer for a few months.

Re: Mailgun (YC W11) Raises $1.1 Million For Its "Twilio For Email"

#45
post #37
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SES is extremely easy. Unless you actually care about deliverability. Deliverability on the modern internet is hard. SES does not handle this. If Mailgun handles deliverability well, that alone is worth the price. Making it programmable is awesome.

Amazon implements trust-based dynamic throttling and only allows verified email addresses. I don't think anyone else does both. Where's your evidence that anyone has better deliverability than SES?

>"Plus, we can give you a completely separated, dedicated setup where your reputation won't be affected by other senders (something SES can't promise you)."

Ahh, so you're using a different IP / subnet for each customer, then? With the internet running out of IPv4 space, I think that companies that do this kind of thing should just have all their addresses revoked. Same goes for "SEO web hosting"

Re: Mailgun (YC W11) Raises $1.1 Million For Its "Twilio For Email"

#46
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does a product have to always be superior to its competitors in order to exist?

No, but if it isn't, then why even bother launching it?

purely for competition.

to some degree, customers make up their own minds about what's "better" when comparing two products/services that may be identical in functionality and pricing.

Someone may prefer the colors/logos on one site vs another, some may prefer where one is located (located in my city/state/country vs the competitor). Some may care about the technology, wanting to support one supplier vs another.

Re: Mailgun (YC W11) Raises $1.1 Million For Its "Twilio For Email"

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a little bit of coding on your part - yes.

Off topic: Is your username a reference to BBC Three's Old Gregg "episode"? I sure hope so. =)

Yes. Hopefully this won't affect the corporate image of Mailgun in any way :)

Re: Mailgun (YC W11) Raises $1.1 Million For Its "Twilio For Email"

#48
To the ppl at Mailgun following this thread: I want to see you guys succeed. Please spend a portion of your funding on getting a better website design. The content of the site was enough to get me to sign up, but you'd be surprised just how much the look and feel of a site matter to some customers.

Re: Mailgun (YC W11) Raises $1.1 Million For Its "Twilio For Email"

#49

To the ppl at Mailgun following this thread: I want to see you guys succeed. Please spend a portion of your funding on getting a better website design. The content of the site was enough to get me to sign up, but you'd be surprised just how much the look and feel of a site matter to some customers.

Will do! Do you mind if I contact you in private regarding specific design issues you'd want to point out? My email is in my profile.

Thanks.

Re: Mailgun (YC W11) Raises $1.1 Million For Its "Twilio For Email"

#50

To the ppl at Mailgun following this thread: I want to see you guys succeed. Please spend a portion of your funding on getting a better website design. The content of the site was enough to get me to sign up, but you'd be surprised just how much the look and feel of a site matter to some customers.

Very good suggestion and it's really needed. Since the service is mostly focused on developers we can "forgive" a not so polished interface, but the overall look and feel could use some improvement.
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