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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

#91

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.

Resend seems to be a UI layer on top of SES, so it is probably not a competitor. People could use SES directly, but if the target group for Resend is a “modern front-end dev” then they probably do not want to, or do not know how to, and thus need that UI layer.

For example, I maintain a popular email sending library (Nodemailer) and if I could get a penny any time some user files an issue with something that is clearly basic for anyone who has ever even touched email, I would be quite wealthy. All these people are good match for a service like Resend, they just want to send mail for a reasonable price and do not care the slightest of what is going on under the hood.

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

#92
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

This seems wild to me. Can you share examples of the complexity of the emails people are coding by hand?

This sounds like a pretty amazing art form if people are building cross-client compatible, rich, modern email designs with tables and inline styling.

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

#95
post #68

Which existing providers are you using on the backend for delivery? Mailgun, Sendgrid? I ask because it takes a long time to build up trust reputation among the major email providers to help ensure deliverability.

I suspect most serious customers will want dedicated IPs, and then they can send using their own servers. Relying on shared IPs is always going to cause problems, especially for high volume users that can sustain enough traffic for their own clean IP sets.

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

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This seems wild to me. Can you share examples of the complexity of the emails people are coding by hand? This sounds like a pretty amazing art form if people are building cross-client compatible, rich, modern email designs with tables and inline styling.

Check out this talk from Mark Robbins from 2018, he's been leading the industry with interactive email for a long time now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7i7YDPcAcM

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

#97
post #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

They announced extended retention as well recently, up to a year.

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

#98
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…

Yes, normally I'm a little adverse to abstractions over HTML, but HTML for email is so convoluted and non-standard that I think in this domain it makes a ton of sense. There may be a world of devs specialized in HTML that works in Outlook (bless you folks) but for this dev used to targeting the browser something like mjml is a lifesaver.

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

#99
As soon as you support inbound email handling we'll definitely give it a go. Mailgun have some critical blockers (and potential security vulnerabilities) that have meant we're looking for an alternative to switch to ASAP.

Ideally by then you'll have migration guides from every big provider and so it will be even easier! Thanks for innovating in this space - it's much needed!

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

#100

> 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.

Sendgrid doesn't log sent email bodies, as a simple example. Think harder!
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