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Launch HN: Resend (YC W23) – Email API for developers using React

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Re: Launch HN: Resend (YC W23) – Email API for developers using React

#81
post #62
post #16

Help me understand the React selling point. Existing email sending software supports text and HTML because that's what email is . No email client out there supports JavaScript, virtual DOMs, event loops, SSR or any such fancy web technology. Instead of hand-crafting an HTML template with etc I'm supposed to use your custom React components ( ...) which you will promptly compile down to the tags I mentioned above. So.…

"Instead of hand-crafting an HTML template with etc" You forgot a whole lot of , all the inline CSS and all the IE11 comment hacks. Oh, and also OfficeHTML or whatever abomination that is called, because Microsoft Word 2003 also remains alive inside Outlook. Most people doing anything of medium complexity is already using some abstraction layer, such as MJML [1]. Also remember you gotta either test on multiple client…

> Most people doing anything of medium complexity is already using some abstraction layer, such as MJML

Citation needed.

I’m an admin for the largest email community online (emailgeeks) and when folks talk about code, everyone is talking about writing this stuff by hand.

Re: Launch HN: Resend (YC W23) – Email API for developers using React

#82
post #71

> Poor observability: Most tools keep you in the dark without knowing what really happened after you sent an email. Resend exposes all the events associated with your email via webhooks. Isn’t this what DMARC is for? I have this setup (along with SPF) with my domain with a strict “reject” policy and a dedicated inbox to receive delivery reports. I do like that you are tracking whether the recipient opened the email o…

DMARC is an anti-impersonation standard, not anti-spam.

DMARC alignment is trivial to set up, so even spammers can do that. That, amongst other reasons, is why all major spam filters are based on content, not DMARC alignment. This is why you can have 100% DMARC alignment and still end up in spam.

Failing to meet DMARC alignment will result in your email being marked as suspicious (with a big fat warning), or flat-out rejected (not delivered), but it typically won't be marked as spam (unless content is flagged as spam, of course). What exactly happens on DMARC unalignment somewhat depends on your DMARC policy, but mostly on the policies/implementation of the receiving provider. Each provider handles DMARC unalignment different.

One thing that is consistent, is that none of the email providers will reflect in any way if your email is flagged as spam or not. Otherwise spammers could trivially figure out which content trigger spam filters, and which content won't. A DMARC report will not tell you if your email is flagged as spam or not. This is also why most email providers will always fetch and cache tracking pixels, again to not expose to a potential spammer if their content made it into an inbox or not. This behavior makes it look like every receiver has opened the email, even though it never happened. This makes tracking pixels useless.

So, Resend's claim to show you 'all the events' means they can display how many mails were send, how many have bounced (due to various reasons, except spam), and how many tracking pixels were loaded. But as explained, the number of pixels loaded does not, in any reliable way, reflect the number of emails actually making it to the recipient's inbox.

Reliably sending email is an insanely hard, you can never guarantee delivery with email anyway. If the 'React' email template editor is the novelty in Resend, I'd suggest them using something like SES to actually send the email. Don't try this yourself, until you verified your product-market-fit and have the scale to invest (heavily) in your own delivery network.

Re: Launch HN: Resend (YC W23) – Email API for developers using React

#83
Please for the love of god do not decide for me where I want to be.

I signed up, confirmed my email, opened the app and was browsing through it and was on settings tab when I got a phone call. During that call I had to look up something so I opened a new tab. After the call I went back to resend's UI to watch it blink and all of the sudden I'm on the dashboard again.

So I tested it, I went to the settings page again, switch to a different tab and then back to Resend again just to watch it switch back.

There is absolutely ZERO reason for this functionality. It is not a better UX, it's an annoying UX you do not know what I am doing or where I want to be on your website.

Re: Launch HN: Resend (YC W23) – Email API for developers using React

#84
post #15
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked with a few of them, currently with SendGrid I think the market is ripe for disruption. It’s a terrible, terrible, experience to work with these systems when you need e-mail visibility to play into a larger setup. We’re doing simple stuff, like giving our sales personal an information stream to track that links into their HubSpot and a few other systems, and it’s frankly so bad that one of our developers…

Out of curiosity, if you are spending a lot of effort to track the data in HubSpot, why not try to send emails directly in HubSpot?

Because that would make sense.

Or the slightly longer version of how HubSpot is sort of our CRM system but also a front end for our on-prem Sharepoint and our Microsoft CRM and a couple of other things. It can send some emails, but not all emails, and when it does send emails someone wants them tracked not just by HubSpot but also by SendGrid because that’s how we track mails in parts of the business. Why do we have both HubSpot and Microsoft CRM you ask, well you are, one department really likes one of them and another department really likes the other.

Re: Launch HN: Resend (YC W23) – Email API for developers using React

#85
post #16

Help me understand the React selling point. Existing email sending software supports text and HTML because that's what email is . No email client out there supports JavaScript, virtual DOMs, event loops, SSR or any such fancy web technology. Instead of hand-crafting an HTML template with etc I'm supposed to use your custom React components ( ...) which you will promptly compile down to the tags I mentioned above. So.…

Sure! Most front-end teams are using React nowadays. What happens when you adopt another email service is that they want you to learn the template language that they use - Handlebars, Mustache, etc. Instead of having to learn how to do things with that language, your front-end team can re-use everything they already know from React land. Imagine being able to import the same button you have on your web app into your…

I think the confusion is coming from the framing of "Email API for Developers Using React" as the title for this post. React has nothing to do with "an email API" as far as I can see.

Your web-site is more clear in that it shows a Node.js snippet (and other environments, although funnily not just in the browser?). Then the site goes on to talk about the React components.

Perhaps "Email API for Developers, with React components" would resolve the issue. The title as it stands suggests I wouldn't be interested in this at all since I'm not using React. But actually, as an e-mail API, I would be (e.g. with a Hugo site).

Re: Launch HN: Resend (YC W23) – Email API for developers using React

#86

So I have used Sendgrid, Mandrill, SparkPost and SES in production and dabbled with Mailgun for side projects. The biggest issue I have is with Logs where other than Mandrill, no one shows the actual Body of the email in logs. For our purposes, we need that. Do you log the Email body ? If yes, I will give it a shot.

Postmark[0] have that and store it for 45 days[1] which is really handy. I use them, not affiliated.

[0] https://postmarkapp.com/ [1] https://postmarkapp.com/email-analytics

Re: Launch HN: Resend (YC W23) – Email API for developers using React

#87

Please for the love of god do not decide for me where I want to be. I signed up, confirmed my email, opened the app and was browsing through it and was on settings tab when I got a phone call. During that call I had to look up something so I opened a new tab. After the call I went back to resend's UI to watch it blink and all of the sudden I'm on the dashboard again. So I tested it, I went to the settings page again,…

Could you not find a million other ways to provide this feedback less abrasively? People like you unnecessarily exacerbate the stress of launching a new endeavor.

Re: Launch HN: Resend (YC W23) – Email API for developers using React

#88
post #78
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in a meeting a while back where a team that was tasked with standing up a few dozen completely static websites was discussing what React components to use. I asked why they were using any front-end JS framework at all and not just creating static html sites, maybe using a generator like Hugo or Eleventy if they wanted to templatize. The answer was that they didn't know how to create plain html sites without JS.…

they declined, saying they could be more productive with React As much as it pains me to say so, they're probably right. If they don't know how to make a static site, and they're familiar with something like Next, then they probably can go faster and just let the framework take care of building the assets. I wish people still made static sites using boring tech but times have moved on, but honestly there isn't much d…

Oh, I'm sure they're right, but it was wild to me, someone who starts any new web-based project with a static html page.

Re: Launch HN: Resend (YC W23) – Email API for developers using React

#89
> Poor observability: Most tools keep you in the dark without knowing what really happened after you sent an email. Resend exposes all the events associated with your email via webhooks.

I can't think of a single email platform I've used as an email marketer/crm marketer for a decade that didn't expose a full event stream for all emails.

Re: Launch HN: Resend (YC W23) – Email API for developers using React

#90

I think if you’re targeting developers, SES is your biggest competitor. Their very cheap pay as you go pricing is more attractive than your monthly pricing. If email templates with react is your usp, I think I’ve seen libraries that offer that already.

SES has a terrible developer experience.

We use it and don't plan on switching for a few reasons, but I would not recommend it to most folks.

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