231–240 of 272 posts
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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...
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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.
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What value are they getting out of carrying a bunch of freeloading accounts? Or put another way: what value are they risking by force-deplatforming the freeloading accounts, besides a bit of splashback from frustrated (non-paying) users?
The value might be a reputation for trustworthiness and fair dealing. Those "freeloading" accounts are offered by companies to users, for the company's benefit, in order to strengthen their market position and lure users into a trap where they'll have little choice but to pay extortionate prices once they've developed a dependence on the service.
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"offer stuff for free until a bunch of people depend on it" Nobody can really be surprised by that, though? Meaning people who sign up are aware that it could happen eventually?
Sustainable self-funded SaaS founder here. Everybody should realize that: * there is no free lunch * a VC-funded business is looking to maximize user base and then get sold, so as a customer you are likely looking at a time horizon of ~3-4 years: plan accordingly * if a niche B2B SaaS offers pricing below $40/month, it's not sustainable and will disappear, so plan accordingly * if anybody offers you stuff for free, s…
My biggest issue with the whole model is that by offering a free tier or by subsidizing everything for "~3-4 years" the VC funded companies make it difficult for anyone to build a business that charges fair value from day 1.
It's hard to deal with because so many people are choosing the "free" option that if you try to pick something that charges fair value, you could end up picking a losing side. Or, even worse, there aren't any alternatives and you get to choose between dying on a hill or running to the slaughterhouse along with the rest of the herd.
Look as Visual Studio Code vs Visual Studio Online. Watch as VSO slowly gets more features than VSC. It'll happen slowly, and intentionally, but VSO will eventually be significantly better than VSC. Then start to think about the integration MS can do with GitHub and Azure to streamline the development process and you get to the point where everything else is an inferior product.
Now we're paying $1k+ per year for a code editor that used to be "free". Right now it's possible to sacrifice time in place of money for almost everything, but I'm worried we'll hit a point where a lot of the development process has been usurped by SaaS offerings and the only way to play will be to pay.
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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.
For example, if you want a quota of 100 messages per day, you have to pay a one time fee of $.10 per message to get into the pool, so $10. If you want a quota of 50k messages per day you have to pay a one time fee of $.005 per message, so $250.
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…
It’s easy to make a proof of concept. Production grade is an entirely different story.
Remember to preserve conversations and forwarding. Make sure file attachments are handled and scanned for viruses. Make sure you watch out for recursive automatic forwarding. Make sure that any html is secure. And make sure it will scale well ... and I mean billions of emails a day well.
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Who cares though? If you have customers the cost to send an email is still almost zero.
Sure the marginal cost of sending another email might be zero. But typically you price based on what people are willing to pay -- not based on costs.
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The problem is having clients who expect free...or rather delivering free to clients who expect free. Your job isn't to save the client money on your services. If having your credit card on file provides value to the client, then charge the client. If it doesn't, charge them anyway because it has value to you.
We started with Mailgun when the free tier seemed established and permanent. No card required. Our CMS taps into their API. Then they required a unique phone number for each account and even that was a time sink getting clients to comprehend what was going on. I think some people underestimate how cost-sensitive some clients are. And how time poor some small businesses are.
Your problem cascades from a B2C approaches to a B2B relationships. Not just yours to your client, but Mailgun's B2C approach to its relationship with your business. Free commercial email is likely to be unsustainable. At best, it's money left on the table because at 10k emails a month, there won't be many conversions. They were delivering free to a customer who expected free with the same damage to the customer's perception of the relationship as between you and your client.
The only part under your total control was whether or not to charge your client money. If you had, then the bad part would be Mailgun raising its prices. You would have had the option of eating the cost. Or having the unpleasant conversation with your client.
Maybe there's something slimy about charging a client for a free tier mail service. That's also under your control. Just pay for a paid tier and pass along cost at normal markup. In the long run, and that's what B2B relationships are about, it will tend to be simpler and simpler tends to be better for everyone.
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Sure the marginal cost of sending another email might be zero. But typically you price based on what people are willing to pay -- not based on costs.
I may have confused you. I mean who cares if you have to pay for mail gun, it’s basically free.
I thought you were saying that since Mailgun has customers, and has built their email infrastructure already, the cost of providing a free service to people who aren't using the tool much is zero.
Thanks for clarifying.