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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

#121
post #115

> 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 exposes it for like 14 days I believe. I tried like hell to get data from before that and support told me you're required to store that yourself. So not super helpful until you realize you needed it in the first place.

This is very true, but I can understand why a transactional provider probably doesn't want to sit on masses of old data like that. Marketing ESP's all usually store the data indefinitely.

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

#122
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya, but why does a transactional email service have anything to do with the front-end....I feel like I'm missing something very obvious but I can't seem to figure it out...

Simpler websites often don't need a backend anymore (beyond automated, managed hosting). Many of them can just e a frontend package that can be deployed anywhere as static output files (CDN, any file host, Vercel, Netlify, Cloudflare Workers, S3, etc.) In such a system, sending an email is traditionally a pain (well, email is always a pain, but even more so when you don't have a dedicated backend). Being able to fan…

This makes sense, but what if you're using a message queue to send transactional emails? Why would you put that logic on the browser?

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

#123

> 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.

If SendGrid fails to send an email it won't tell you why or that you even attempted to send an email.

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

#124

I don't really see as most of these features being particularly new or different, there are loads of SDKs and packages around for rendering emails and sending them with various providers. It's really a non-issue. Deliverability is the #1 problem all developers actually face with this imo. We have perpetual issues with extremely high importance, but extremely low volume transactional email from admin panels alerting v…

I have had good luck with MXRoute for this. They have a fairly strong antispam stance on their platform.

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

#125
post #49
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya, but why does a transactional email service have anything to do with the front-end....I feel like I'm missing something very obvious but I can't seem to figure it out...

I _think_ the idea is just to use React as a templating language to write HTML emails, rather than dealing with the quirks of email HTML directly; it's not about sending emails from the frontend.

But why use React to do that when you can achieve the same thing on the backend?

https://mjml.io/

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

#126

> 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.

If SendGrid fails to send an email it won't tell you why or that you even attempted to send an email.

[deleted]

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

#127
Congrats Zeno. Have tried today and falling in love with Resend. Currently installed it with my sites. Easy to setup and looks stable. Would you plan to announce another plan in the middle of Free and Pro? I think 20 monthly and 50k emails sometimes overusing. 10 monthly and 20k emails or something.

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

#128
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya, but why does a transactional email service have anything to do with the front-end....I feel like I'm missing something very obvious but I can't seem to figure it out...

I've worked at a couple companies (medium-scale) with home grown email solutions. The server-side rendered templating grew into being used for HTML email as well. It helped the backend devs as the tech that rendered the webpages also rendered the emails (all server side rendering), and the frontend devs needed less training to go from just frontend to frontend + emails. It was sort of a path of least resistance thing…

> It was sort of a path of least resistance thing and it did have its drawbacks.

This makes sense, but ya aren't there serious scaling implications to this?

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

#129

I don't really see as most of these features being particularly new or different, there are loads of SDKs and packages around for rendering emails and sending them with various providers. It's really a non-issue. Deliverability is the #1 problem all developers actually face with this imo. We have perpetual issues with extremely high importance, but extremely low volume transactional email from admin panels alerting v…

I have had good luck with MXRoute for this. They have a fairly strong antispam stance on their platform.

Oh, great shout. Thanks.

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

#130
post #45
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya, but why does a transactional email service have anything to do with the front-end....I feel like I'm missing something very obvious but I can't seem to figure it out...

I don't mean this snarkily, but have you ever used a transactional email service? Literally all of them support frontend, I'd much rather use something like React than "Handlebars" (which Sendgrid requires https://docs.sendgrid.com/ui/sending-email/how-to-send-an-em... )

I think he may have wondered how would, say a Python backend using Resend Python SDK, render a React Email template and send it. Their API docs [1] for "Send Email" has an option for specifying a 'react' component to render the message but it's only available on the NodeJS SDK. Otherwise you pass HTML and/or Text.

Personally, I was expecting the api to optionally accept a React Template, along with the Data, where upon the Resend api would Render it (or fail) then Send it. Passing a 'preview' param would return the rendered HTML/Text (for testing) - just a thought.

[1] https://resend.com/docs/api-reference/emails/send-email

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