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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

#171

Post by jcrites »

cpncrunch wrote: post #149
maxmalysh wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon SES — $0.10 per 1000 emails.

Because it's shite. I've blocked SES's IP range on all my servers, as they just ignore spam reports.

Sorry to hear about that experience. One of SES's primary goals was keeping abuse off of the service, though no system is perfect. When I worked on SES, more than 50% of the team's total time went into fighting abuse. Part of that effort was comprehensive monitoring of a variety of feedback signals, including bounces, spam complaints, and other data. Individual senders are encouraged to monitor their own sending via the Reputation Dashboard and related facilities [1].

SES also monitors these signals, and if it detects signs of abuse, such as elevated bounces or spam complaints, then a sender's ability to send may be paused and the account's activity may be reviewed. FAQ on these processes [2]. Some of the tolerates are quite tight, and can result in action being taken even if much less than a percent of messages are getting these sorts of responses. There's a lot more that I can't describe in a short comment.

SES processes and reacts to spam reports sent in standard formats like the Abuse Reporting Format (ARF), and looks at signals like List-Unsubscribe and bounces, etc. But this does require the system to understand the format of the reports used by the feedback loops [3]. Do you happen to know if your feedback loop sent spam complaints in ARF format? If you'd like to discuss further, feel free to reach out to me directly.

[1] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/messaging-and-targeting/announc...

[2] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/e-faq....

[3] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/messaging-and-targeting/email-d...

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

#172

Post by bigiain »

greglindahl wrote: post #139
bigiain wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My claim was that sending electronic mail is a solved problem, because it is. Agreed. I mean, I can _probably_ remember enough to be able to send mail using just telnet without even needing to look anything up. (And that mail, without any mime parts or urls - it very very likely to not fall into any of the spam filtering on my inbound email accounts...)

In the modern era, lots of mailservers run software that looks for weirdnesses in incoming email. I don't know, but I'd suspect that the typing delays of using telnet to send mail are likely to trigger their defenses.

SO I just tested. After working out that on macOS I now need to use nc -c instead of telnet... I _can_ send mail manually, but it _does_ end up in gmails's spam folder saying "Why is this message in spam? It is similar to messages that were identified as spam in the past."

  Iain-2:~ iain$ nc -c gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com 25
  220 mx.google.com ESMTP k5si5682618pls.209 - gsmtp
  EHLO elided.org
  250-mx.google.com at your service, [202.171.181.100]
  250-SIZE 157286400
  250-8BITMIME
  250-STARTTLS
  250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
  250-PIPELINING
  250-CHUNKING
  250 SMTPUTF8
  MAIL FROM: 
  250 2.1.0 OK k5si5682618pls.209 - gsmtp
  RCPT TO: 
  250 2.1.5 OK k5si5682618pls.209 - gsmtp
  DATA
  354  Go ahead k5si5682618pls.209 - gsmtp
  Subject: Test
  From: bigiain@elided.org
  To: bigiain@gmail.com
  Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2020 13:07:00 +1100
  
  Foo baz nah
  
  .
  
  250 2.0.0 OK  1580436443 k5si5682618pls.209 - gsmtp
  QUIT
  221 2.0.0 closing connection k5si5682618pls.209 - gsmtp
  Iain-2:~ iain$

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

#173

Post by donmcronald »

seibelj wrote: post #163
webbie917 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really has become a norm and is very frustrating for customers, while there is simply a better way to do this - kill free plan for NEW customers, but grandfather existing customers. Or at least introduce some break-even (low profit margin) plan/tier to move existing customers to, no need to force them off the platform completely. Yes, spammers are a big issue for all ESPs (my own biz in this space is no exception)…

Why? It's their business. You didn't sign a contract saying "free for life". It's sad, but there is no free lunch, and you shouldn't build your own business off the assumption that some resource will be free forever.

Free tiers are just another type of market research where the company is collecting data to determine the stickiest features.

$8 (or less) per month to keep using the feature with competition (sending). $35 a month to keep using the feature without competition (receive filtering and forwarding). Is that a coincidence?

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

#174

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

NightlyDev wrote: post #152
veeralpatel979 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Did you explicitly ask for it? Good

That's what 'transactional' means... it's supposed to be used for the end or beginning of a transaction (reset password, receipt for a purchase, things like that...)

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

#175

Post by jelling »

prawn wrote: post #62

I use Mailgun with various client sites. Where I find these sorts of services awkward as they become paid (Google Maps APIs are similar) is that for each client I have to put my credit card on file, monitor charges and bear costs in case of a blow-up OR I have to go through the hassle of coaching technically hapless clients through logging in and adding a credit card. “I thought you said it would be free?” “It probab…

Have your clients created a virtual card number using Privacy.com and allocate $X of spend to it per month. They can then give you that card number to setup their services.

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

#176

Post by sieabahlpark »

NightlyDev wrote: post #152
veeralpatel979 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Would you like to be notified your account has been breached? Perhaps a notification that a login was attempted from another country.

There are plenty of good notifications besides social media updates.

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

#177

Post by cpncrunch »

jcrites wrote: post #171
cpncrunch wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's shite. I've blocked SES's IP range on all my servers, as they just ignore spam reports.

Sorry to hear about that experience. One of SES's primary goals was keeping abuse off of the service, though no system is perfect. When I worked on SES, more than 50% of the team's total time went into fighting abuse. Part of that effort was comprehensive monitoring of a variety of feedback signals, including bounces, spam complaints, and other data. Individual senders are encouraged to monitor their own sending via…

I submitted multiple reports to email-abuse@amazon.com including headers, and received automated responses. For some spammers I reported them 4 times, but the spam kept coming.

I think you've confirmed what I said in my parent comment...SES doesn't take a zero tolerance approach.

I think it is the shared IPs that I've blocked (54.240.27.189/24). You'll see they are on multiple blacklists.

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

#178

Post by prawn »

jelling wrote: post #175
prawn wrote: post #62

I use Mailgun with various client sites. Where I find these sorts of services awkward as they become paid (Google Maps APIs are similar) is that for each client I have to put my credit card on file, monitor charges and bear costs in case of a blow-up OR I have to go through the hassle of coaching technically hapless clients through logging in and adding a credit card. “I thought you said it would be free?” “It probab…

Have your clients created a virtual card number using Privacy.com and allocate $X of spend to it per month. They can then give you that card number to setup their services.

We're not in the US. They would also question this as something they haven't had to do for any other service. Plus, painful to repeat for dozens of small clients. I appreciate the idea though.

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

#179

Post by mc3 »

edmundsauto wrote: post #106
staticautomatic wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The alternative is simple:

For stranger to stranger communication, both business and non-business set up a web form. With a challenge if needed.

For friend to friend communication, use email, friends' address in on a white list.

For business to consumer communication, white list is again used.

For spammer to anyone communication, including business lists that refuse to take you off, not on white list so doesn't get in. Bounce response with reason "non on white list"

It's a cultural change though: an email address won't get through unless you are unblocked, but technically easy.

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

#180

Post by akira2501 »

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…

> 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 [...]

Maybe someone more knowledgeable can help me.. but from a laymans point of view, how is this different from the practice of "dumping?" Shouldn't the FTC be more active in protecting markets from this type of strategy?

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