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I always had the impression that using services like Mailchimp make that much less likely than doing it DIY on top of a more commodity transport like SES. I.e. they stay on top of and evolve with best practices over time so you don't have to.
Is that in any way accurate?
For most reasonable applications that is basically a great advertisement for mailchimp, Eg if you rolled your own solution you’d only save eur 500 a year before accounting for the build and maintenance of your solution.
I know that one of the very hard problems with automating email is not landing in the spam folder. I always had the impression that using services like Mailchimp make that much less likely than doing it DIY on top of a more commodity transport like SES. I.e. they stay on top of and evolve with best practices over time so you don't have to. Is that in any way accurate?
For most reasonable applications that is basically a great advertisement for mailchimp, Eg if you rolled your own solution you’d only save eur 500 a year before accounting for the build and maintenance of your solution.
This line of reasoning is how to tell the difference between a manager and an engineer :)
I have been running mail servers for 20+ years, sending volumes that would have made me multiple times bancrupt if I was doing it via Mailchimp or SES.
The real advantage is to have control over your own infrastructure and ensure the privacy of your reader base.
The drawback is having to monitor blocklists and the reputation of your server IP address.
I know that one of the very hard problems with automating email is not landing in the spam folder. I always had the impression that using services like Mailchimp make that much less likely than doing it DIY on top of a more commodity transport like SES. I.e. they stay on top of and evolve with best practices over time so you don't have to. Is that in any way accurate?
500€ is 5 hours of labor. If you are skilled and everything works right away you may only spend 2 hours on the self-maintained solution which means you save 3 hours or in other words … nothing. You also have to maintain/update the system, maybe spend time teaching other people. It’s not worth the effort. If you don’t have expert knowledge in the required tools/services, it will take much longer than 5 hours to set up…
Only if someone will pay you for those 5 hours. Otherwise may as well say they’re worth 37 starfish or 92 leprechauns.