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Tell HN: Mailgun lowers free-tier API from 10k to 625 emails per month

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Re: Tell HN: Mailgun lowers free-tier API from 10k to 625 emails per month

#101

Post by prawn »

vermontdevil wrote: post #91
prawn wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are clients if they found us to provide a service they needed, and we can provide it in a profitable way. Our business found Mailgun to be a great solution when we anticipated clients would stick under 10k/mo and not need a card on file. With Stripe, every time they pay their cut, they've had a sale. Every time they mail-out through MailChimp, it's to a list of customers. We are usually using Mailgun to send tra…

Mailgun does not owe you or anyone a free tier. Start charging your clients money to cover costs that comes with their business.

They literally offered a free tier!

My original point was not even anything to do with cost but hassle!

Re: Tell HN: Mailgun lowers free-tier API from 10k to 625 emails per month

#102

Post by luckylion »

stefan_ wrote: post #27

So under the guise of spam protection, we have created an oligopoly of email gateways, despite sending an email being an utterly trivial, long solved problem, and now those companies are putting the squeeze on. The best part about this particular item on the list of "things that have only gotten worse over time": they charge companies more to deliver what is essentially spam, and they conspired to make that spam show…

No, we've created something far better. ~50% of the Spam that makes it to my inbox is sent via Amazon SES. Amazon does not give a fuck, I've reported it to abuse, they ignore it.

I can't just block Amazon SES though, because there's also a ton of legit services that use them for mail transport. We've really helped spammers evade blocking and decrease their infrastructure costs, and because there's so much "normal" traffic on SES, spammers will blend right in. And as long as they pay for services rendered, Amazon couldn't be happier.

Re: Tell HN: Mailgun lowers free-tier API from 10k to 625 emails per month

#103

Post by prawn »

brudgers wrote: post #84
prawn wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We started with Mailgun when the free tier seemed established and permanent. No card required. Our CMS taps into their API. Then they required a unique phone number for each account and even that was a time sink getting clients to comprehend what was going on. I think some people underestimate how cost-sensitive some clients are. And how time poor some small businesses are.

I don't underestimate how bad clients can be. I don't over-estimate how hard it is for some self-employed people to ask for more money. It's ok to be fired by people who aren't paying you. It's even better to fire clients who aren't.

These clients ARE paying me. I like them. They just have an overloaded plate of issues and it’s no fun having to tax them further when a third-party setup changes. Initial point wasn’t even about cost but hassle.

Re: Tell HN: Mailgun lowers free-tier API from 10k to 625 emails per month

#104

Post by rcfox »

illnewsthat wrote: post #100

This is super frustrating. I was using Mandrill which changed their pricing, so Sparkpost had a great offer for new users. Then they had such a terrible bait and switch [0]. I then did hours of research and switched to mailgun only to now need to find a new provider again. (I don't blame Mailgun here, it's not like they made an explicit promise "this won't ever go away"). I'm not opposed to paying for usage, but my a…

I feel like you just read the headline and not the email in the body. The email quoted is all about their pay-per-use model.

Re: Tell HN: Mailgun lowers free-tier API from 10k to 625 emails per month

#105

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

christoph wrote: post #89
bigiain wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think some people underestimate how cost-sensitive some clients are. And how time poor some small businesses are. Those aren't "clients", they're "moochers". If they're prepared to walk away because it costs them $35/month to send to their mailing list, you probably owe it to yourself/your business to spend your time seeking new better clients rather than talking them thru how to get stuff/service for less than $…

A lot of my clients fit this. What I’ve done to “solve” it for us, is to stop charging for hosting and “services” each month and realistically price it in to the initial contract. A lot of our projects are between £5k and £20k. I don’t want to be raising invoices for £20 or £30 per month. Their corporate finance department doesn't want to be processing small amounts each month either. All these projects have limited…

You could align incentives this way by structuring the deal to include a three year "service and support" component. You can build that in to provide a fixed cost yet at the same time have the flexibility to charge more if your cost structure has changed after the time passes.

Re: Tell HN: Mailgun lowers free-tier API from 10k to 625 emails per month

#106

Post by edmundsauto »

staticautomatic wrote: post #51
ebiester wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still do that. However, I, as a receiver of email, get thousands of spam messages a day. So, I use services that block them before they even reach my view, or get sent directly to the spam folder. If you want to send me an email, that's solved. If you want to send it to ten thousand people on your mailing list, and not have it end up in the spam folder, you may have more work.

This raises what's really the ultimate question, which is whether and how much individuals should be made to suffer so that advertisers can send spam. Certainly the recipients are not responsible for the advertisers' decisions to spam, or more charitably, to blur the lines. Yet it's individuals who pay, in this case literally, for the advertisers' privilege of spamming them. It's extremely fucked.

I think this is what happens in open systems. The alternative is walled gardens, like FB messages. Even those suffer from spam, although it's much less of the wild west.

Re: Tell HN: Mailgun lowers free-tier API from 10k to 625 emails per month

#107

Post by edmundsauto »

kick wrote: post #47
space_ghost wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're both right, but you're solving different problems. Just because your message got past your spam filter doesn't mean it would get past all spam filters.

It is absolutely not. Even if you are not considering the whole spam thing. They specified that it wasn't even if you could ignore the spam issue. I said that it was if you ignored the spam issue. The first post in this thread was "We've made sending electronic mail way too complicated under the guise of fighting spam." I'm aware that it won't get past every spam filter, but it gets past both Gmail's and my own provi…

Similarly, talking is a solved problem. Talking, so that people will listen, is not.

Communication is much more than just broadcasting, just as email is about more than sending emails.

Re: Tell HN: Mailgun lowers free-tier API from 10k to 625 emails per month

#108

Post by donmcronald »

jadbox wrote: post #87

Losing the inbound routes functionality completes wrecks my use-case for mailgun. I've been using it as a way to have business emails come through a custom domain and then routed to personal email addresses. It actually works well enough as with personal email you can respond "as" the custom domain. I have a tiny startup with a few users that I use the routing to move incoming email to also their own personal address…

ZOHO is the only one I can find that still offers a free tier with a custom domain. Their lite $1/month/user account might be an ok fit for you.

It's crazy how the norm has become $5/user/month for something that every web-host on the planet used to charge $.10/user/month for. "But it includes file storage". Yeah, because cable TV tiers is what I always hoped for in tech. /s

Re: Tell HN: Mailgun lowers free-tier API from 10k to 625 emails per month

#109

Post by edmundsauto »

pmlnr wrote: post #30
black1101 wrote: post #14

Is there any alternative to Mailgun for sending / receive mails for free? Let's say 500mails per month? Thank you.

gmail? outlook? basically anything with imap access.

This is downvoted, but correct. You can programmatically tap into a Gmail account and send 20-30 emails per day, which adds up to the 500/mo.

Re: Tell HN: Mailgun lowers free-tier API from 10k to 625 emails per month

#110

Post by veeralpatel979 »

corobo wrote: post #96
veeralpatel979 wrote: post #53

10k emails per month is generous. Maybe too generous. Selfishly I wish they didn't increase the price, but as a aspiring SaaS founder, it's totally fair that they did. They do provide value. But 625 emails per month amounts to around 20 emails per day. If you have 5 customers, then you can send them 4 emails per day. So not much. I wish they found a middle ground here.

As a hypothetical customer please don’t send me 4 emails a day. Or week for that matter.

Mailgun is transactional mail though. Not marketing mail. Mail that you want to receive like password resets, email confirmations, notifications, etc
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