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Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

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Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#151

Post by zmmmmm »

anto1ne wrote: post #113
sofuture wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the point , though: usage driven fees. It's absolutely not the most economical offering, but the freedom and ability to either quadruple your infrastructure or shut it down entirely, no strings attached, in an instant is what you're paying for.

With most of dedicated server providers now, you can get any server with a 1 month contract, no strings attached, for a fraction of the price of an equivalent ec2 instance, and good IO as a bonus. And good providers usually delivers within 24h. I love aws services and use them myself, but for ec2, but I doubt most users have such volatile needs. The main advantage I see, for aws users (non ec2) is to have everything…

> With most of dedicated server providers now, you can get any server with a 1 month contract

Still not really the point. You're going to have to buy enough servers in advance to handle your peak load every month. And then you're going to have to forecast ahead at the end of the month and cancel all the ones you don't need. It might be theoretically possible but in practice it is ridiculous. EC2 brings the contract interval to 1 hour and lets you control it with API calls.

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#152

Post by kijinbear »

pkulak wrote: post #119
bryanh wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be true, but from what I remember, the transition past 2000 was very difficult with Google Apps. In the end you'll have to go with a email provider like SES (or the now troubled PostmarkApp).

Wait... troubled? I use Postmark...

Which is now almost 15 times as expensive as Amazon SES. (Almost, because Amazon also charges a small data fee.)

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#153

Post by ROFISH »

jeffbarr wrote: post #43

Here's my blog post: http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2011/01/introducing-the-amazon-si... If you like to solve puzzles, be sure to read the PS!

The bitstream converted to their ASCII value is ".zncf anug erggro fv abpno". When reversed and ROT-13ed, it is:

"Bacon is better than spam."

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#154

Post by gdesouza »

Well you have to love Amazon's focus on KISS (keep it simple, stupid) -- heck it's even called the _Simple_ Email Service! I can only imagine the number of (illustrious) tech companies that would have tried to dress this up like a revolution in computing.

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#155

Post by haploid »

eli wrote: post #23
aristidb wrote: post #20

So I was immediately looking at their REST API... And true to form, Amazon adds yet another slightly incompatible request signing method. Consistency is for wimps.

I dare you to look at the API for some of the "traditional" email service providers. I've had the displeasure of working with a few from some of the big names and they are real DailyWTF material.

Um, postmark? It's an extremely simple API to implement.

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#156

Post by awj »

blhack wrote: post #124

I want to be excited about this, but amazon basically destroyed any trust I had in them (at least the people that handle AWS). I signed up for the amazon free usage tier of AWS, excited to try it out, and really really loving amazon for doing something like that (giving away service for free). I signed up, spun up an EC2 instance (careful to make sure that this really was free), checked it out for a few minutes, then…

> About a month later, I got a bill for $60 from amazon.

...sounds like you launched the wrong instance type (specifically "small" instead of "micro"). Unfortunately that's easy to do, since small is the default in most cases. From what I remember the docs regarding free usage aren't too emphatic about this issue.

It's hard to out-and-out call this "user error", but I also don't think it's bait and switch. Mostly just poor documentation on amazon's part that contributed to a less-than-sufficient level of understanding on yours.

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#157

Post by lazyjeff »

blhack wrote: post #129
corin_ wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you billing me for something that is free? Can't really respond to that, though as a paying customer, and someone who knows many people who've used the free tier, I would imagine it was a mistake on your end, although maybe they should have been more clear on Ts&Cs or something. Hard to say without knowing more. or any of the other "cloud" providers Google are (in)famous for that problem, AWS I can't honestly…

>AWS I can't honestly say I have any experience with it. I can honestly say because I do have experience with it. Maybe it was something I clicked, but that is classic bait and switch. I would have never even considered AWS if it wasn't free and definitely didn't intentionally buy anything from them (as I said, I already have linode and slicehost, which is more than I need). I'm not sure where you're going with this.…

Check the activity usage report. They break down in quite a bit of detail where the charges are. You can break it down even further by hour. I've used the Free Tier with no charges for over a month now, and have been pretty happy with it.

The one thing the Amazon Free Tier does charge for which is strange is regional data transfer (transfer between machines on AWS), but they provide you with 15GB of internet data transfer. Very odd.

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#158

Post by jeffbarr »

ROFISH wrote: post #153
jeffbarr wrote: post #43

Here's my blog post: http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2011/01/introducing-the-amazon-si... If you like to solve puzzles, be sure to read the PS!

The bitstream converted to their ASCII value is ".zncf anug erggro fv abpno". When reversed and ROT-13ed, it is: "Bacon is better than spam."

Indeed it is!

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#159

Post by danudey »

Travis wrote: post #121
tedunangst wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People sign up. People get tired of your email. Clicking spam is easier than clicking unsubscribe (which people are also taught not to click on). Both AOL and Yahoo have been pretty aggressive about banning mail servers that send too much "spam", which in several cases was a legitimate mailing list people had to ask to subscribe to.

I've seen some aggressive stuff out of Excite, as well (although I only know a few people who use them). One other reason someone might hit "Report Spam" rather than unsubscribe: your unsubscribe page requires an account login (rather than unique hash) to unsub. If I can't remember that login, and I'm exasperated by the company already, I'll hit the Report Spam button just b/c it's so much easier. Email unsubscribes…

For years, people have been told 'don't click on "Unsubscribe" in spam, it just tells people that your e-mail address really exists'.

Except that people can't tell the difference between 'e-mail I don't want and never asked for' and 'e-mail I signed up for but don't remember', so they click the 'spam' button automatically. For a lot of people, the 'spam' button is actually the 'I don't want to get these e-mails anymore' button.

This is why companies like AOL, etc. have feedback loops. You register yourself with them, and you set your system up to handle spam complaints. When a user complains about a legitimate message, you just remove them from your list. If you don't have those feedback loops set up, then AOL assumes you're being a dick (and/or the spam complaints go to the IP address owners, who've registered themselves already).

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#160

Post by Titanous »

zmmmmm wrote: post #151
anto1ne wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With most of dedicated server providers now, you can get any server with a 1 month contract, no strings attached, for a fraction of the price of an equivalent ec2 instance, and good IO as a bonus. And good providers usually delivers within 24h. I love aws services and use them myself, but for ec2, but I doubt most users have such volatile needs. The main advantage I see, for aws users (non ec2) is to have everything…

> With most of dedicated server providers now, you can get any server with a 1 month contract Still not really the point. You're going to have to buy enough servers in advance to handle your peak load every month. And then you're going to have to forecast ahead at the end of the month and cancel all the ones you don't need. It might be theoretically possible but in practice it is ridiculous. EC2 brings the contract i…

http://newservers.com/ does hourly-billed, API provisioned, dedicated servers.
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