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Mandrill’s Betrayal

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Re: Mandrill’s Betrayal

#141

Post by jrodom »

BogusIKnow wrote: post #130
jrodom wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We (Mailgun) have a process to support EU model clauses that has allowed us to continue supporting most of our EU customers. There are a lot of nuances to all of this, so it's best to talk to someone on our team who has expertise and access to our legal team to come up with a plan for you. Additionally, the landscape will change on this once Privacy Shield, the successor to Safe Harbor, is enacted. It will offer stro…

Your answer is ambigious. Refering to privacy shield is of no help. Your sales team did not answer to several inquiries last autumn so some of my clients switched from Mailgun to Mandrill last autumn.

I'm not sure why there was a disconnect with our sales team, but I'm happy to help. Could you e-mail me with more details? josh [at] mailgun [dot] com

The model clause process is not trivial and often requires work between the legal teams from Mailgun and the respective EU company. We've gone through the process and can definitely help any of our existing or prospective customers get through it, though. Every business is a little different, so we'd need to talk through the specifics.

Re: Mandrill’s Betrayal

#142

Post by Savageman »

jrodom wrote: post #132
Savageman wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though you definitely still have space for improvements. I have a Mailgun account and: 1. I didn't configure my MX so you don't track delayed (asynchronous) bounces. It should be your responsibility as an email provider to use an appropriate Return-Path so spam complaints/bounces reach back to the client in this situation. 2. I opened ticket #212817 a while ago (September) about how a MITM could capture emails and re…

On issue #1, we're going to update the language around this in our control panel and put together better documentation. In reality, having MX records are important to allow for sender address verification [1], which many SMTP servers require. On issue #2, Thanks and apologies for the slow response, This ticket slipped under our radar. To give you a quick answer: we'll look into the approach you described in your blog…

Thank you for replying. Glad you guys are considering this :)

Re: Mandrill’s Betrayal

#143

Post by fweespeech »

ceejayoz wrote: post #41
fweespeech wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or imagine something like a system that alerts people when X band announces a concert date in Y town. Lots of people subscribe to get an email notification about that so it's 1 email to 500 people in Duluth. Not exactly a newsletter, not exactly transactional. That is bulk email, fyi. > I have a friend with a service that sends out 10k-ish customized mealplans each week to their paying customers (each email is fair…

> They told you it was for transactional email. I'm not sure how you concluded that meant "bulk mail" was okay. It's explicitly stated to be OK in their own FAQ: https://mandrill.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/206251597-Wha... > you can send any legal, non-spam email through Mandrill, too and on http://mandrill.com/about/ > Use Mandrill to send automated one-to-one email like password resets and welcome messages, as w…

It must have changed from when I first signed up. The original ToS, etc. didn't state that.

It also doesn't appear to state that presently.

For instance:

https://mandrill.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/206251597-Wha...

> Mandrill is an email infrastructure service designed to help applications or websites that need to send transactional email like password resets, order confirmations, and welcome messages.

> Any bulk email should be sent through MailChimp, rather than Mandrill.

Re: Mandrill’s Betrayal

#144

Post by fweespeech »

kidcoach wrote: post #38
fweespeech wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is largely correct. It was intended as a purely transaction / alerting / etc. mail platform and not for bulk/marketing emails. However, I never went over the free limits with that sort of mail which I suspect was the problem. My guess is 90% of the revenue was people using it for bulk email and so they figure forcing them to MailChimp isn't a major loss.

This has to be the goal of the change. Move people who into paying mailchimp customers who are taking advantage of mandrill. The issue is they alienate all the people who's problem set doesn't fall into mailchimp's offering. Who knows what that percentage is but my guess is over 80%, so they understand they are screwing over the majority to make a profit off the minority. This is from Ben at mandrill: > "I can say to…

Yeah but when I originally signed up I was told that was the purpose back in 2013.

Re: Mandrill’s Betrayal

#145

Post by ceejayoz »

fweespeech wrote: post #143
ceejayoz wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They told you it was for transactional email. I'm not sure how you concluded that meant "bulk mail" was okay. It's explicitly stated to be OK in their own FAQ: https://mandrill.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/206251597-Wha... > you can send any legal, non-spam email through Mandrill, too and on http://mandrill.com/about/ > Use Mandrill to send automated one-to-one email like password resets and welcome messages, as w…

It must have changed from when I first signed up. The original ToS, etc. didn't state that. It also doesn't appear to state that presently. For instance: https://mandrill.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/206251597-Wha... > Mandrill is an email infrastructure service designed to help applications or websites that need to send transactional email like password resets, order confirmations, and welcome messages. > Any bulk…

Yes, they changed it after it was tweeted at them.

https://twitter.com/mandrillapp/status/704770382750941184

Re: Mandrill’s Betrayal

#146

Post by spronkey »

ssharp wrote: post #67
gk1 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine there was some kind of crisis happening behind-the-scenes... That's the only explanation I see for the overnight policy change and lagging updates on the site. Either that or total incompetence. Interestingly, their (former) competitors are taking full advantage of the outrage by running ads on Twitter and LinkedIn aimed at Mandrill customers who've been screwed.

I wonder if they found certain types of Mandrill users were destroying their deliverability metrics and were starting to cause issues with major email providers and their spam factors. These ESPs can't exist with poor desirability, so they have to put protecting that ahead of a lot of other things that might get them more customers.

Considering how good Mandrill's delivery was, I'd be surprised if this were the case. Even still, there are better solutions - cut the free tier off, for example!

Re: Mandrill’s Betrayal

#147

Post by spronkey »

jonathanbull wrote: post #127

I co-run https://emailoctopus.com (an email marketing service which uses Amazon SES), and over the past few days we've seen a huge increase in signups. The fallout from this email seems large - these people aren't just moving away from Mandrill, but are also dropping MailChimp at the same time.

I really hope their customers completely abandon them. We have - switched to Sendy and SES for newsletters, and investigating what to do with our transactional emails.

This sort of behaviour should be absolutely frowned upon, in any industry.

Re: Mandrill’s Betrayal

#148

Post by spronkey »

tdaltonc wrote: post #32
misiti3780 wrote: post #29

Can someone explain to me why they would do this ? I cannot think of a reason why they would stop providing this service.

They've making an 80/20 decision. Make the service better for the 20% of users that produce 80% of your revenue and price everyone else out. They don't want to be the startup economies dumb email tube. They want to be a high margin service for companies with more marketers or designers than programers.

Indeed. But instead of gracefully transitioning like a sensible company would - i.e. slowly phasing the two together, teeing up alternatives for customers, giving plenty of advanced notice and warning etc, they've gone full nuclear.

Part of me hopes they go bankrupt.

Re: Mandrill’s Betrayal

#149

Post by isachintiwari »

ceejayoz wrote: post #137
isachintiwari wrote: post #135

Pepipost - Free SMTP alternative to Mandrill http://www.pepipost.com/ - Free plan and send up to 25,000 emails each month. Free forever. - No credit card required. - DKIM is not required (Domain Verification: (a.) Meta Tag Validation, (b.) File Creation - System can verify the domain based on the presence of a file in the root directory of the domain.). - Pay only for emails that are not opened by your customers. * 3…

I'd want to see deliverability numbers, and "free forever" is probably what got Mandrill into this situation. They had to roll back that promise. No credit card required means spammers just register a new account for every 25k emails they want to send. I'd rather pay for something sustainable.

Hello, Pepipost build on a very clear philosophy to encourage good senders and fight against SPAM, hence Pepis follow a strict on-boarding and delivery processes for both Paid and Free customers. This helped in achieving 100% deliverability with highest Inbox placement rate for all good senders.

Re: Mandrill’s Betrayal

#150

Post by ceejayoz »

isachintiwari wrote: post #149
ceejayoz wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd want to see deliverability numbers, and "free forever" is probably what got Mandrill into this situation. They had to roll back that promise. No credit card required means spammers just register a new account for every 25k emails they want to send. I'd rather pay for something sustainable.

Hello, Pepipost build on a very clear philosophy to encourage good senders and fight against SPAM, hence Pepis follow a strict on-boarding and delivery processes for both Paid and Free customers. This helped in achieving 100% deliverability with highest Inbox placement rate for all good senders.

[citation needed]

No one gets 100% deliverability, and highest inbox rate for all senders requires serious proof.

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