Live data from Hacker News

Plunk: The open source email platform

github.com

11–20 of 91 posts

Re: Plunk: The open source email platform

#11

> built on top of AWS SES. [...] can be considered as a self-hosted alternative to services Someone doesn't really understand self-hosting.

To most shops, using SES is considered "doing it ourselves" so I somewhat get the characterization. It's very common for self-hosters to use DO, Lightsail, Hetzner because the thing you're hosting is the software. With SES the line between it and SG can be huge if you're using all of SG's high-level features or razor thin if you use SG as SMTP over API.

Re: Plunk: The open source email platform

#13

To this day I don't understand why email providers don't offer first-party Mail Merge facilities themselves. AFAIK Microsoft is the only one that offers the feature with Word and Outlook in its Office suite, and even that is very restrictive (besides being downright inaccessible from the newer apps).

Probably because it’s rarely used for anything other than unwanted email, aka spam.

Or batched transactional emails like monthly statements that need to have user/region specific variants.

https://www.twilio.com/docs/sendgrid/api-reference/transacti...

Re: Plunk: The open source email platform

#14

> built on top of AWS SES. [...] can be considered as a self-hosted alternative to services Someone doesn't really understand self-hosting.

self-hosting does not have to mean that you host the whole stack yourself

That is literallly what it means.

Re: Plunk: The open source email platform

#15
post #8

My understanding was that the main interest of SendGrid, Mailgun et al was precisely that they manage to (more or less) reliably mass send email through the great MS/Google/Proofpoint, where hitting the recipient's mailbox is less than guaranteed if you self-host.

Maintaining sender reputation is tough and I don't think anyone in their right mind should try this in house. If you're not a M3AAWG member, you'll probably hit a brick wall when trying to explain to Google why your whole IPV4 block is erroneously on a blocklist.

Re: Plunk: The open source email platform

#16

> built on top of AWS SES. [...] can be considered as a self-hosted alternative to services Someone doesn't really understand self-hosting.

The last time I tried to use Sendy with SES I received a NNN from AWS after I stating I would be using it for email marketing (MailChimp alternative). It seems that my "self-hosting" idea was cancelled by a 3rd party.

Re: Plunk: The open source email platform

#17

> built on top of AWS SES. [...] can be considered as a self-hosted alternative to services Someone doesn't really understand self-hosting.

self-hosting does not have to mean that you host the whole stack yourself

Even if, the core of emailing is sending emails.

Re: Plunk: The open source email platform

#19
(Disclaimer: I run Buttondown, which is an email-inflected product. I also have a comparison guide of various MTAs here — https://buttondown.email/comparison-guides/esps — and will add Plunk!)

Nuances of self-hosting aside, I'd recommend caution looking at that pricing pane.

The disclaimer is:

> Calculated based on the plan that best matches the features of Plunk at 2500 emails per month.

And the author then cites prices of $0.001/email for Plunk and $0.013/email for Sendgrid.

I am neither a user or fan of Sendgrid but that feels like disingenuous anchoring. Sendgrid's free plan is 100/day; if you want to eliminate the free plan entirely and just focus on their cheapest paid option, it's $19.95 for 50K emails — or $0.000399/email, cheaper than Plunk's sticker price.

It's not entirely obvious to me how that $0.013 was even calculated ($0.013 * 2500 = $32.50). Either way, be sure to spot-check against live sticker rates before making a decision there.

Post reply on HN