Plunk: The open source email platform • Hacker News Board

Re: Plunk: The open source email platform

#21

Post by bgentry » Tue, Aug 06, 2024, 4:18 PM UTC

prmoustache wrote: post #7

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

Resend is also built on top of SES, and yet it's an extra layer of hosted services on top of it. So this is actually a self-hosted alternative to i.e. the functionality that Resend offers, even though there are still other underlying dependencies. Seems like a reasonable way to describe it IMO.

Re: Plunk: The open source email platform

#22

Post by v3ss0n » Tue, Aug 06, 2024, 4:18 PM UTC

Gys wrote: post #6

v3ss0n wrote: post #5

Why on top of SES? why not SMTP?

Because AWS SES offers an API for sending mails and IMAP is a protocol for a mail client talking to a mail server?

Fixed, I meant SMTP. SES is not open protocol and it's not self hostable. no point in using this for selfhost env

Re: Plunk: The open source email platform

#23

Post by v3ss0n » Tue, Aug 06, 2024, 4:20 PM UTC

You have a wrong understanding of self hosting. SES is not self hostable and require to depend on close source paid service.

So this just makes an opensource email UI not platform

Re: Plunk: The open source email platform

#24

Post by bgentry » Tue, Aug 06, 2024, 4:23 PM UTC

Having recently adopted Resend and skimmed a bunch of different email APIs, I'm still waiting to find a single provider whose API supports Stripe-style idempotency [1] so that I can guarantee I don't send the same email through their API multiple times. I'd like to confidently avoid accidentally spamming a user if i.e. a background job retries multiple times due to an unrelated error, or merely from failing to receive the API response that an email was sent/created successfully.

Plunk's API does not appear to offer any such feature: https://docs.useplunk.com/api-reference/transactional/send

Unfortunately neither does Resend, Sendgrid, Postmark, etc.

[1]: https://docs.stripe.com/api/idempotent_requests

Re: Plunk: The open source email platform

#25

Post by rbarnes01 » Tue, Aug 06, 2024, 4:26 PM UTC

Great timing, I was just looking into Mautic.

If I have multiple brands, would I need to set up a separate instance for each one?

Re: Plunk: The open source email platform

#26

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF » Tue, Aug 06, 2024, 4:27 PM UTC

bgentry wrote: post #24

Having recently adopted Resend and skimmed a bunch of different email APIs, I'm still waiting to find a single provider whose API supports Stripe-style idempotency [1] so that I can guarantee I don't send the same email through their API multiple times. I'd like to confidently avoid accidentally spamming a user if i.e. a background job retries multiple times due to an unrelated error, or merely from failing to receiv…

Yep I was shocked that SendGrid doesnt do this

I don't even expect them to keep a list of IDs forever, just some best effort like "we don't send anything with the same id twice in a one-hour window"

Gmail's API did support this I believe, and then ofc my org transitioned to Microsoft so my little homemade email service quit working

Re: Plunk: The open source email platform

#27

Post by jdpedrie » Tue, Aug 06, 2024, 4:27 PM UTC

v3ss0n wrote: post #5

Why on top of SES? why not SMTP?

Because if you send marketing emails through SMTP, your delivery rate will be approximately 0.00%, or if you're leveraging a third party SMTP, they will ban you.

Re: Plunk: The open source email platform

#28

Post by aidenn0 » Tue, Aug 06, 2024, 4:32 PM UTC

v3ss0n wrote: post #5

Why on top of SES? why not SMTP?

Because delivery rates through self-hosted SMTP are lower than through commercial e-mail delivery services; the latter being close to unity[1] and the former ranging from near-zero to about 7/8 depending on how much work and time you put into doing things.

1: My "close to unity" number comes from my experience with the mailgun APIs, I assume that SES is similar.

Re: Plunk: The open source email platform

#29

Post by weego » Tue, Aug 06, 2024, 4:33 PM UTC

teddyh wrote: post #14

trallnag wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That is literallly what it means.

This is self hosted. I think we'd all accept that a "self hosted Stripe" that obviously had to offload payment processing to a third party gateway could still be self hosted because the platform is, not every dependency. Volume email is not something you should be looking to 'self host' and would leave the product dead on arrival if it did.

It feels like pedantry to critique that aspect so heavily over spirit v letter.

Re: Plunk: The open source email platform

#30

Post by kevindamm » Tue, Aug 06, 2024, 4:35 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #11

prmoustache wrote: post #7

> 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.

I would say self-hosting is not equivalent to DIY. It's about owning the whole stack, not about bought-vs-made.