Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SendGrid appends a tracking pixel even when disabled

cappe.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–29 of 29 posts

Re: SendGrid appends a tracking pixel even when disabled

#21

Post by npsomaratna »

technothrasher wrote: post #20
crisp wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the insight. It's the only mailer service I've used so far but seems like I gotta do some exploring.

I've been exploring lately, and the only two I've actually tried so far are SendGrid and Amazon SES. Both of them have a free tier that lets me play. Both of them have so far had pretty poor deliverability due to being in blacklists, though SendGrid has been better. I'm just looking for something that doesn't cost an arm and a leg for the minimal email volume I send, and that has better deliverability than sending my…

Postmark works well for transactional email. We've seen consistently good deliverability over time.

Re: SendGrid appends a tracking pixel even when disabled

#22

Post by lambic »

capableweb wrote: post #3

Personally I stopped using SendGrid when they forced everyone to start using insecure 2FA (requiring a phone number instead of the normal OTP/TOTP that can be setup via any authentication app), presumably to force more people to use Twillio services or something.

Their 2FA uses the twilio authenticator app now.

Re: SendGrid appends a tracking pixel even when disabled

#23

Post by technothrasher »

npsomaratna wrote: post #21
technothrasher wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been exploring lately, and the only two I've actually tried so far are SendGrid and Amazon SES. Both of them have a free tier that lets me play. Both of them have so far had pretty poor deliverability due to being in blacklists, though SendGrid has been better. I'm just looking for something that doesn't cost an arm and a leg for the minimal email volume I send, and that has better deliverability than sending my…

Postmark works well for transactional email. We've seen consistently good deliverability over time.

Thanks! It was on my list to check out, I guess I'll do that now :)

Re: SendGrid appends a tracking pixel even when disabled

#24

Post by Belphemur »

npsomaratna wrote: post #21
technothrasher wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been exploring lately, and the only two I've actually tried so far are SendGrid and Amazon SES. Both of them have a free tier that lets me play. Both of them have so far had pretty poor deliverability due to being in blacklists, though SendGrid has been better. I'm just looking for something that doesn't cost an arm and a leg for the minimal email volume I send, and that has better deliverability than sending my…

Postmark works well for transactional email. We've seen consistently good deliverability over time.

I used them at the previous company I worked. They were just launching their products.

They have the best support I ever encountered, we were having weird delivery issue on some specific clients and they help us debug the whole problem.

They have more than fair pricing and actually do a manual verification when you want to start using them (and not just testing with your own domain).

Their hobbyist tier is 100 mails per month. No credit card required.

Re: SendGrid appends a tracking pixel even when disabled

#25

Post by raxxorrax »

notreallyserio wrote: post #19
jwr wrote: post #17

BTW, don't use SendGrid unless you intend to pay them lots of money for a dedicated IP. I've been using them for a couple of years now and it's extremely frustrating, because they are used by spammers and do not react quickly enough or simply do not care. Some of your E-mails will end up sent from IPs that landed in various anti-spam blackhole systems already and will never reach their destination. This happens regul…

I'm not sure this is limited to SendGrid. Are there comparable email services that don't use shared IPs or that have done a consistently good job of stopping spammers? I've had moderate-to-poor luck with Mailgun (Yahoo and Microsoft don't really like them much).

AWS SES doesn't seem to have a problem, but you have to describe your usage and verify the domain from which you will be sending.

They usually act within 24h to enable sending if you have set up everything.

Re: SendGrid appends a tracking pixel even when disabled

#26

Post by vertis »

capableweb wrote: post #3

Personally I stopped using SendGrid when they forced everyone to start using insecure 2FA (requiring a phone number instead of the normal OTP/TOTP that can be setup via any authentication app), presumably to force more people to use Twillio services or something.

Yeah, Twilio tried to force that on me as well. Couldn't enable 2FA auth without a phone number and since I'm a digital nomad phone numbers and sim cards are a pain point.

Opted just not to use Twilio.

It's bizarre because they own Authy so could have pushed more people towards that instead.

Re: SendGrid appends a tracking pixel even when disabled

#28

Post by crisp »

jiveturkey wrote: post #27

There's additionally a mail setting for list management that interacts with tracking. That one might need to be disabled as well. This is very poorly documented.

Thanks for helping out, I'll go through the settings one more time. The customer service just repeated the same mantra that the tracking pixel is always added, regardless of what the Open Tracking setting is.

Re: SendGrid appends a tracking pixel even when disabled

#29

Post by jwr »

notreallyserio wrote: post #19
jwr wrote: post #17

BTW, don't use SendGrid unless you intend to pay them lots of money for a dedicated IP. I've been using them for a couple of years now and it's extremely frustrating, because they are used by spammers and do not react quickly enough or simply do not care. Some of your E-mails will end up sent from IPs that landed in various anti-spam blackhole systems already and will never reach their destination. This happens regul…

I'm not sure this is limited to SendGrid. Are there comparable email services that don't use shared IPs or that have done a consistently good job of stopping spammers? I've had moderate-to-poor luck with Mailgun (Yahoo and Microsoft don't really like them much).

Postmark is next on my list of services to try. They specifically say "It’s our job to provide you with great deliverability with or without dedicated IP addresses" and they allow you to separate transactional E-mails from the rest.
Post reply on HN