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Discourage use of Mailgun as a mail provider

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Re: Discourage use of Mailgun as a mail provider

#51

Post by JustARandomGuy »

> Despite the incident in 2018, Mailgun appears to be giving an excessive level of access to customer data to employees who do not need it in 2020: Joe had access to specific customer domain information, and didn't hesitate to use it purely to try to sell me something. From this, I infer that it is likely routine that sales staff examine customer data without any kind of control or approval. I don't think this is acceptable.

Same thing happened with me on GoDaddy. I used GoDaddy's domain purchase system to negotiate and buy a domain, and transferred it to Cloudflare. A few years later, a GoDaddy buyer contacted me about buying the domain. The only way they could have gotten my email is to trawl through their past purchase records since the domain wasn't using any GoDaddy systems (DNS, email, etc) after it was transferred out.

I sent a very unhappy email back to them and I've been transferring my domains out to other registrars. I no longer recommend GoDaddy.

Re: Discourage use of Mailgun as a mail provider

#52

Post by stavros »

davidcuddeback wrote: post #49
stavros wrote: post #21

Everyone here is talking about Evan's response, so I may be misunderstanding something, but... If I'm billed for a dedicated email for years and it hasn't been provisioned for me, isn't that a major problem with the service?

> If I'm billed for a dedicated email for years and it hasn't been provisioned for me, isn't that a major problem with the service? If that's true, yes. But it sounds plausible that the salesman was in error (also a problem, but less severe IMO): > (Mail headers show the dedicated IP is functioning correctly, see "headers.png", where the outbound route matches the dedicated IP in the web interface.)

Ah, I missed that, thanks.

Re: Discourage use of Mailgun as a mail provider

#53

Post by davidcuddeback »

boc wrote: post #40
jonathonf wrote: post #32

I'm surprised by the other comments here that I'm in the minority thinking that the sales approach was pretty terrible. You're trying to sell something you don't understand to a company you don't understand. Why? If you actually want to "help" a company (by selling them your product... not really sure how that's "helping", but...) then at least do some research into the company and provide something that looks useful…

Counterpoint is that Mailgun likely had flagged the account (80% deliverability is bad) and wanted to open a line of communication without coming across as hostile. It wasn't a sales opportunity, it was a "you need to improve" email wrapped in a friendly opening. Evan then replied taking a hostile footing, which resulted in the sale rep backing up his opening with a list of agenda items (list cleaning, dedicated IP a…

> It wasn't a sales opportunity

Yes, it was. In the salesman's own words: "First, you're right, it is a low effort sales template. It does work."

> not a good look for the blog author

The OP isn't a blog. It's a task that Evan filed for himself to migrate away from Mailgun.

Re: Discourage use of Mailgun as a mail provider

#55

Post by literallyWTF »

hash872 wrote: post #47
gizmo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t fire a customer for being testy. It’s way disproportionate and if customers are unhappy you want to know this. Rude feedback is still feedback, and most businesses struggle to get honest feedback because most people are just way too nice

I run a business and I absolutely would fire a customer for being needlessly rude to an employee. If they're angry at the employee they can direct their 'feedback' to me. But yeah this 'the customer is always right' chunk of American culture needs to die- abusing employees is not 'feedback', nor is it acceptable

Gotta love this entitled attitude of “I can be a dick because I’m paying you!! What do you mean you’re refusing service!!! I’m a customer!!!”

Re: Discourage use of Mailgun as a mail provider

#56

Post by annoyingnoob »

dioxide wrote: post #6

If I were mailgun, I'd be okay losing Evan as a customer.

I would try to see this from Evan's perspective. Its easy to find next to useless Sales people, its harder to find a good customer. Evan is a busy guy and said please don't waste my time with a Sales call this is only for your own benefit and then got something else.

And I don't want you Sales people poking around in my SaaS setup or in my data.

Re: Discourage use of Mailgun as a mail provider

#57

Post by mikeryan »

ganeshkrishnan wrote: post #50
zippergz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? The use cases for Mailgun and gsuite have effectively no overlap.

both send emails and both allow user email creation (with mailgun it was virtual email forwarded to personal email). I had to switch to gsuite because hubspot doenst allow external smtp server to send out emails and we couldnt use mailgun.

If you started sending Hubspot marketing or CRM emails directly from Gsuite its going to get marked as Spam, thats the whole point of using a transactional service.

I've had multiple clients in the past who have decided to send "Check out my new App!" emails to their entire contact list from Gmail who shortly found out the hard way that it caused all their emails to start being marked as Spam.

Don't use Gmail like this.

Re: Discourage use of Mailgun as a mail provider

#58

Post by niftylettuce »

ganeshkrishnan wrote: post #37

I went from mailgun to gsuite. costs went up 3x and almost all of my emails are going to spam folders even when the contact and I have been emailing each other for ages. Would definitely recommend mailgun/sendgrid over gsuite for emails and not entirely agree with this blog post.

I built https://forwardemail.net as the costs went up and I needed a cheaper alternative for my domains. Any questions feel free to email me, nick@forwardemail.net

Re: Discourage use of Mailgun as a mail provider

#59

Post by xemdetia »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #9
jrockway wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that it sounds harsh to say "I don't take meetings with no agenda", but is the right thing to do. Everyone wants your time, and it's the most valuable resource you possess, so being protective makes a lot of sense. I wouldn't reply to someone's email and accuse them of "low-effort sales" or whatever. I'd just say "thanks, not interested" and then be internally mad at the low effort. From the other side, I thi…

> it sounds harsh to say "I don't take meetings with no agenda", but is the right thing to do Evan's is the wrong way to do it. "I am busy–do you have specific recommendations you can share over email" is more concise, polite and to the point. (Ignoring the e-mail, or a simple not interested, are also options.) And if you want to use those words, fine, but leave off the "low effort" insults at the end.

I would say that telling someone who emailed you in an unsolicited fashion that you have an expected protocol for interaction isn't in the wrong and putting that line first in an unambiguous way is practically required for how people read emails. They did ask for context after that line, which was fine. I will say that the 'low-effort' part of their phrasing could have been constructed better but the first reply was more in the scope of stern and terse than outright insulting and hostile. I feel like I have to answer dozens of emails like this in a similar fashion because then I get the form letter or PDF that they want to show me over a meeting or they actually give an agenda and I can make the appropriate decision for myself. Since there's an existing relationship here any ambiguity wastes everyone's time, if it was an unrelated entity then you can assume sales email but in this case you can't. Any moderate sized company or larger is a multi-headed hydra so it's never obvious what part of the beast you are talking to and why they are seeking you out.

Re: Discourage use of Mailgun as a mail provider

#60

Post by jiveturkey »

JustARandomGuy wrote: post #51

> Despite the incident in 2018, Mailgun appears to be giving an excessive level of access to customer data to employees who do not need it in 2020: Joe had access to specific customer domain information, and didn't hesitate to use it purely to try to sell me something. From this, I infer that it is likely routine that sales staff examine customer data without any kind of control or approval. I don't think this is acc…

Of course GoDaddy is scummy, but this is not the only way your information could have been obtained. During the transfer out period, you must provide unmasked contact info. There are services that crawl this info and provide a full historical ownership history. So if your information was ever available in whois, including during the short transfer window, it has been crawled.

That said GoDaddy has never been a good registrar anyway.

I'm just going by what you are saying: that not using GoDaddy email means they couldn't have contacted you. Not using GoDaddy email service is irrelevant and your mention of it at all implies you aren't aware of how your information can get out. It's certainly possible to prevent it but you're not giving the vibe that you understand this.

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