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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

#151

Post by prawn »

Scoundreller wrote: post #111
vermontdevil wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think the ask is that we wished Mailgun did that from the start instead of creating messes later in the process.

I don't mind them having a free tier and tweaking their offering. But I think grandfathering in older accounts is nicer, and I wish it was easier to work with accounts in a technical role when you are not technically the client, but are acting for them in most ways.

e.g., I can set up their account and other technical parts after that, but I can't verify their mobile number (added since we started working with Mailgun), don't have their credit card details to put on file (same), and often end up agreeing to legal notices for them rather than asking them to complete signup (and stalling the project).

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

#152

Post by NightlyDev »

veeralpatel979 wrote: post #110
corobo wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't know about you, but I usually don't want to receive notification emails. Did you explicitly ask for it? Good. Is this some stupid notification that I won't care for and was enabled by default? Congratulations on getting flagged.

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

#153

Post by dpcan »

prawn wrote: post #80
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 $…

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…

I'm completely with you on this.

The responses to your posts are disgusting. I don't think a lot of people around here understand what it means to provide services to small local businesses.

I don't know about you, but I'm in a smaller community, people here still earn $7.25 per hour, and I just don't have access to deep-pocketed big businesses. I work with small businesses, individual business owner/operators, and mom and pop type places. $35 here, $50 there - it all adds up fast, and they are very conscious of these costs, and so am I.

Going to a small business owner and trying to explain any kind of price hike for a service they thought was free is just another burden to them, and it makes MY recommendation of the original service seem bad .... and I'm the guy they came to for GOOD advice.

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

#154

Post by NightlyDev »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #76
rapfaria wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What service sends 4 e-mails to your inbox everyday?

I have some free v1agra for you to buy from n1g3rian princ3.

It's seems to be working though, everyone knows about the Nigerian Prince. He's really good at marketing.

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

#155

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#156

Post by lolc »

aseipp wrote: post #83
bigtunacan wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain the difference to me. Mailgun is sending tons and tons of spam email; what is so special about them that they aren't ending up in people's spam/junk folders?

Mail providers like Mailgun live or die based on their reputation. If they as a sender get marked as spam by "The Algorithms", then their product is useless. They almost certainly respond to abuse reports quickly and have enough reputation, and enough legitimate clients, that they have "leeway". But that leeway isn't unlimited. There was a big fit thrown on this website a year or two ago when one transactional mail p…

They really care with their reputation on the line. Here for example is their response to the only complaint I've had to send Mailgun: "Thanks for sending this over. I was able to tie this sender to a compromised account, which has been disabled in our system to prevent further messages."

Pity we'll have to move off them. It was good while it lasted.

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

#157

Post by smoyer »

donmcronald wrote: post #134
ttul wrote: post #118

My company (MailChannels) sends email on behalf of more domains than any other transactional email provider (see https://trends.builtwith.com/mx/transactional-email/traffic/... ) because our customer base is hosting companies rather than individual senders. The whole transactional space has matured in the past year with SendGrid's acquisition by Twilio and Mailgun passing through a couple of different private equity…

The thing that annoys me is the standard operating procedure in tech is to offer stuff for free until a bunch of people depend on it and then to start charging as much as you possibly can once there's a large enough customer base that a reasonable percentage won't have any choice but to bear the updated costs. Mailgun did a pretty nice job by offering a pay-as-you-go tier, but they still took features from the free p…

I'd love to have a business (of any sort) with customer lock-in ... sadly none of my start-ups have ever achieved that position.

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

#158

Post by bigiain »

dpcan wrote: post #153
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…

I'm completely with you on this. The responses to your posts are disgusting. I don't think a lot of people around here understand what it means to provide services to small local businesses. I don't know about you, but I'm in a smaller community, people here still earn $7.25 per hour, and I just don't have access to deep-pocketed big businesses. I work with small businesses, individual business owner/operators, and m…

> it makes MY recommendation of the original service seem bad

If your advice was "you get 10,000 emails per month free via $service" without qualifying "right now, but that isn't guaranteed forever, their paid tier is $x per 1000 emails and switching mail providers in the backend of your website will take approximately $Y hours at $chargable_rate", then it _was_ "bad advice" (or at the very least "incomplete advice").

I made this mistake way to many times before I learnt that lesson. (Most recently with Google Maps on websites...)

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

#159

Post by bigiain »

Scoundreller wrote: post #111
vermontdevil wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think the ask is that we wished Mailgun did that from the start instead of creating messes later in the process.

Mailgun also wished that you'd have signed up as a full paying customer when you first wanted their service. But they knew they weren't gonna get what they wished for either...

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

#160

Post by bigiain »

prawn wrote: post #101
vermontdevil wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

In most businesses "hassle" and "cost" are synonyms...
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