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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

#221

Post by quicksilver03 »

gwittel wrote: post #71
kick wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sending an email is absolutely a solved problem. I can send a message to my address in 2020 using a 2003 Fedora Core 1 box without a domain using only what's part of the POSIX standard, and I'll receive it just fine. I just did a few days ago, actually. It even got past my provider's spam filter. I could probably have done it using earlier software than 2003-era mail/mailx, but that was the quickest way I could find…

Sending at scale is the problem. A provider like Mailgun (aka an ESP), is a huge target for abuse. Free and low priced tiers are tricky since they need to draw in customers, but then get heavily abused. tl;dr: Abuse ruins it for everyone. I work on the filtering side of the world so I see a lot of the challenges that even purportedly good actors face. Each provider does better or worse at controlling abuse. These thi…

> IPs -- You need to send from a variety of IPs. They have warmup time before they can be safely used. One bad guy can burn that IP and everyone who shares. Most ESPs aren't going to have dedicated IPs for each (or those are for high tiers).

I'm curious, is that specific to IPv4 or you see the same phenomenon with IPv6 where providers allocate /64 or /48 to customers? Or there simply isn't enough sending volume from IPv6 at the moment to warrant specific filtering?

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

#222

Post by mike-cardwell »

stefan_ wrote: post #27

So under the guise of spam protection, we have created an oligopoly of email gateways, despite sending an email being an utterly trivial, long solved problem, and now those companies are putting the squeeze on. The best part about this particular item on the list of "things that have only gotten worse over time": they charge companies more to deliver what is essentially spam, and they conspired to make that spam show…

We have our own domain in G-Suite for our mail. I just checked my GMail Spam box. In it are 6 emails from this week. All 6 of them were sent through Mailgun, from and to the same domain (the one in G Suite). One was a cron email from one of our servers and the other 5 are transactional emails about people signing up to our service.

All of them passed both SPF and DKIM.

How. Just how did these emails get spam filtered by Google? Everything about them screams that they're legit emails from ourselves to ourselves.

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

#223

Post by Multicomp »

pests wrote: post #184
donmcronald wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ZOHO is the only one I can find that still offers a free tier with a custom domain. Their lite $1/month/user account might be an ok fit for you. It's crazy how the norm has become $5/user/month for something that every web-host on the planet used to charge $.10/user/month for. "But it includes file storage". Yeah, because cable TV tiers is what I always hoped for in tech. /s

Ceck out Mitadu. $5/for unlimited domains and users. Prices rise with outgoing mail needs.

Signed up based on this comment.

There is a free trial tier that only lets you send 10 emails a day.

You also have to own at least one domain.

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

#224

Post by brnt »

niftylettuce wrote: post #124

ForwardEmail is a good alternative if you're just doing forwarding for now (also has Send Mail As from Gmail). I built it because I was sick of the alternatives and it's 100% open-source. https://forwardemail.net

What does support for 'send as from Gmail' mean though? Doesn't Gmail allow that with any address you forward to it? Does it mean an SMTP server?

And what about when forwarding it not to Gmail?

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

#225

Post by aembleton »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #170
prawn wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a lot of clients using MailChimp's free plan which has worked well for them. I am grandfathered into using all Google's services for my business for free (ignore usual criticisms of Google) because I got in early. I've worked in this industry for over 20 years and found that the more complicated your explanation, the less likely clients are to want to work with you. Being a stick in the mud on usability is ano…

I certainly understand that. And grandfathered or not your use of Google's services for 'free' for your business is coming to an end. As long as you understand the risk you are carrying you can price out the externalities of it going south. To explain that, consider this artificial example made up based on what you just wrote; "I have a lot of clients using MailChimp's free plan ..." Now lets say MailChimp has a toug…

> And grandfathered or not your use of Google's services for 'free' for your business is coming to an end.

When are they coming to an end? I'm also grandfathered in, and haven't heard about this.

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

#226

Post by aembleton »

scottmotte wrote: post #115

Why hasn't someone built an email system that only accepts signed payloads? Email would only be allowed into my inbox if it was signed. Then, layer 2, it would only allow signed emails from senders whom I've accepted their public key. A separate tab would show me all incoming request to accepts public keys (request to send email) Now to opt-in to a marketing email I first accept their public key. To opt-out I delete…

> Why hasn't someone built an email system that only accepts signed payloads?

Because it requires both parties to play along. Lets say I had such a service and I signed up for an account on Github. Github would have to implement this and give me a key. OK, maybe they do; but Stack Overflow don't. Then I end up reverting to Gmail or Fastmail.

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

#227

Post by sethammons »

donmcronald wrote: post #196
cpncrunch wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you literally block (aka drop) mail from SES IPs? That's awful for your users. If you really distrust mail from those IPs so much, why not just filter it straight to SPAM? At least you'd be delivering it and your users could whitelist senders (or domains) they trust.

I also work in this space. We have many customers who leave email platforms on Amazon because the IP space is polluted. Many inbox providers are extra cautious with email from those IPs because spamming is easy. Even if your IP is not used for spamming, someone else in the same /24 space could be.

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

#228

Post by sethammons »

cpncrunch wrote: post #150
sanj001 wrote: post #10

We used to be customers of Mailgun, but last month moved over to SES. Not that there's anything wrong with Mailgun, SES's pricing is far cheaper (60K free emails if you're sending from an AWS instance), and deliverability is on par. But SES is super basic. It's just an API, no fancy analytics. So of course, I built a small web app that "wraps around" SES, and gives you some insight into what you're sending, some pret…

The problem with SES is that they ignore abuse reports. They even admit that they only block you if you have more than a given complaint rate. That is how gmail works, but for a bulk email service they really need to investigate every complaint. I've just blocked SES's ip ranges on my servers.

> investigate every complaint

I'm not sure this is valid. Some users will consider anything spam, including password reset emails they asked for.

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

#229

Post by nekoashide »

maxmalysh wrote: post #127
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…

Amazon SES — $0.10 per 1000 emails.

We looked at SES and it was a no go on reputation alone. We went from a few thousand emails on Mailgun to almost 7 million emails across 140 domains and we have never encountered any reputation issues over the years we have used them. It just works and I suspect this change is to help protect their email reputation.

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

#230

Post by gwittel »

quicksilver03 wrote: post #221
gwittel wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sending at scale is the problem. A provider like Mailgun (aka an ESP), is a huge target for abuse. Free and low priced tiers are tricky since they need to draw in customers, but then get heavily abused. tl;dr: Abuse ruins it for everyone. I work on the filtering side of the world so I see a lot of the challenges that even purportedly good actors face. Each provider does better or worse at controlling abuse. These thi…

> IPs -- You need to send from a variety of IPs. They have warmup time before they can be safely used. One bad guy can burn that IP and everyone who shares. Most ESPs aren't going to have dedicated IPs for each (or those are for high tiers). I'm curious, is that specific to IPv4 or you see the same phenomenon with IPv6 where providers allocate /64 or /48 to customers? Or there simply isn't enough sending volume from…

It’s mostly IPv4. The volume over v6 isn’t there.

Blocking via IP on V6 is tricky since it’s not clear what a safe/useful block range would be.

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