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Web Services Our Startup Relies On Every Day

mygengo.com

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Re: Web Services Our Startup Relies On Every Day

#21

Post by moe »

fookyong wrote: post #5
swombat wrote: post #3

I'm not convinced about the need for SendGrid. Learning to set up an email server isn't that hard in this day and age, and we seem to get very decent deliverability with our own SMTP server - and don't pay a penny for any emails sent. I'm planning to build an email subscription feature for swombat.com soon, and was looking at options like SendGrid, but I just can't justify the cost. When you send people a sign-up con…

you get decent deliverability now - what are you going to do once that stops happening? one of the points of SendGrid is that you pay them to worry about that, so you can concentrate on your core competency.

one of the points of SendGrid is that you pay them to worry about that

Where are you getting that from?

I see nothing on the SendGrid page to suggest they track your blacklist status or feel obliged to help with unlisting when it happens.

Re: Web Services Our Startup Relies On Every Day

#22

Post by patio11 »

swombat wrote: post #3

I'm not convinced about the need for SendGrid. Learning to set up an email server isn't that hard in this day and age, and we seem to get very decent deliverability with our own SMTP server - and don't pay a penny for any emails sent. I'm planning to build an email subscription feature for swombat.com soon, and was looking at options like SendGrid, but I just can't justify the cost. When you send people a sign-up con…

I use SendGrid, too. It was a no-brainer: $80 a month is cheap, I am expensive. I was quite expensive indeed dealing with persistent minor clusterflops like, e.g., automated forum spambots for the forum I host for college debaters (an old hobby) caused the BCC mailserver they were freeloading off of to have enough of a spike that a large multinational advertising company decided BCC "Thanks for paying me $30 Cindy, here's the software you just bought" emails needed to be consigned to the seventh circle of hell sandwiched between Viagra spam and their own customer support requests.

Re: Web Services Our Startup Relies On Every Day

#24

Post by moe »

robert_mygengo wrote: post #20
moe wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting high deliverability is actually incredibly complicated. Urban legend. You need a dedicated IP address to send mail from, which you need to be whitelisted by the big ESPs That is nonsense. Nobody reaches out to the ESPs to have their IPs "whitelisted" in advance. You reach out when, if and after you've been blacklisted, in order to get unlisted . To get it whitelisted, you need to "warm it up" before you start…

>>> "You don't magically get higher deliverability only because your mail is passing through them. They don't have mythical "whitelist" slots at the ESPs. They're not even on the radar of the ESPs." That's absolutely right, you don't. But email deliverability turned from a massive mystery and headache for us, into a sure-fire deal, the day after we implemented SendGrid. We develop translation/localization related app…

If they're a good deal for you then there's no arguing with that.

I didn't mean to say they have no value proposition at all; the API and stats they provide can sure be useful for some.

All I was saying is that their raw deliverability is no different to running your own server. And your own server doesn't charge a few pennies per mail...

Re: Web Services Our Startup Relies On Every Day

#26

Post by robert_mygengo »

moe wrote: post #24
robert_mygengo wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> "You don't magically get higher deliverability only because your mail is passing through them. They don't have mythical "whitelist" slots at the ESPs. They're not even on the radar of the ESPs." That's absolutely right, you don't. But email deliverability turned from a massive mystery and headache for us, into a sure-fire deal, the day after we implemented SendGrid. We develop translation/localization related app…

If they're a good deal for you then there's no arguing with that. I didn't mean to say they have no value proposition at all; the API and stats they provide can sure be useful for some. All I was saying is that their raw deliverability is no different to running your own server. And your own server doesn't charge a few pennies per mail...

Sure, I think it's a valid point. No beef there.

Re: Web Services Our Startup Relies On Every Day

#27

Post by relix »

swombat wrote: post #3

I'm not convinced about the need for SendGrid. Learning to set up an email server isn't that hard in this day and age, and we seem to get very decent deliverability with our own SMTP server - and don't pay a penny for any emails sent. I'm planning to build an email subscription feature for swombat.com soon, and was looking at options like SendGrid, but I just can't justify the cost. When you send people a sign-up con…

I dropped the idea of using Postmark after I read this blog-post: http://blog.postmarkapp.com/post/1431120311/oddities-in-gmai...

In there they admit that mails sent through Postmark still end up in Spam-folders or black holes. That was basically the only added value I'd get from using them.

Re: Web Services Our Startup Relies On Every Day

#29

Post by rlivsey »

swombat wrote: post #3

I'm not convinced about the need for SendGrid. Learning to set up an email server isn't that hard in this day and age, and we seem to get very decent deliverability with our own SMTP server - and don't pay a penny for any emails sent. I'm planning to build an email subscription feature for swombat.com soon, and was looking at options like SendGrid, but I just can't justify the cost. When you send people a sign-up con…

For us it's just another thing that's not our core competency which we're happy to have outsourced so that other people worry about security/maintenance etc... Similar rationale for using Spreedly [1] for subscription billing.

In the future it may be the case that we move that in house, but right now it's working out really well.

We're using PostMark [2] which amounts to $1.50 per 1000 emails, which is cheap enough for our uses. It's one less thing to worry about so we can focus on more important tasks such as finishing the v2 we're about to launch!

  [1] - http://spreedly.com/
  [2] - http://postmarkapp.com

Re: Web Services Our Startup Relies On Every Day

#30

Post by petenixey »

I'll second that Xero is an excellent service and it really doesn't get as much press as it deserves in the states. They're very easy to use and have done an heroic job building out both the software and support.

HOWEVER, their entry-pricing is incredibly irritating. For $228/year you can't add any more than 5 invoices or reconcile more than 20 lines of bank statement per month. For the entire price of quickbooks every single year you should be able to at least use your accounting system.

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