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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

#251

Post by jjeaff »

NightlyDev wrote: post #154
crankylinuxuser wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have some free v1agra for you to buy from n1g3rian princ3.

It's seems to be working though, everyone knows about the Nigerian Prince. He's really good at marketing.

Interesting thing about that. One might ask why any scammer still uses Nigerian prince tactics since it is so we'll know and so obviously a scam.

The reason is that they are selecting for the most clueless marks. If you don't get a bunch of red flags from an email like that, then you are likely going to be an easy mark.

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

#252

Post by jwr »

donmcronald wrote: post #235
jwr wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I get how it works. I just dislike it. Did you have to compete against any VC funded companies? 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 pic…

I'm in a small niche, which is likely too small for VC funding. That said, it's something I worry about all the time: getting a competitor who can burn cash for several years and not worry about sustainability is my nightmare.

I agree that VC funding makes it difficult to charge reasonable fees. It hurts everyone: both businesses and customers in the long term.

I would not mix a discussion of SaaS into this. I personally believe that subscriptions are the only sustainable way to develop and maintain software these days. "Buying" software, "owning" it forever and using it on rapidly changing operating systems and environments is fiction.

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

#254

Post by Keverw »

mike-cardwell wrote: post #222
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…

Wow, sounds like even if you pay for a company to do then still might not go to inbox 100%... I noticed marking things not as spam still sends things to spam, I figured be doing that would tell it it's not spam...

I was recently thinking about the email problem myself, and was reading about IP Warmups. Seems like every provider has different recommendations too. So sounds like not an exact science either. But maybe if it was an exact science it'd be hard to tell the good and bad guys apart. I guess one of the tricky problems with decentralized systems.

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

#255

Post by cx42net »

black1101 wrote: post #26

Is there any other service instead of Mailgun who can also receive/resend incoming mails? I didn't find anything nice. thank you.

I run https://improvmx.com, a service to forward incoming emails to a personal inbox (like @gmail's). Is this what you are looking for?

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

#256

Post by cx42net »

mrpotato wrote: post #81

I would be curious to know how many of their free tier users will be converted to paying customers. Is the bulk of their free tier users over the 625 mark or below?

I've been a user at Mailgun for a few years now. Easily sending more than 625 emails per month.

When they launched the new pricing, they said that only the new users will be affected. Maybe they'll change that in the future, but for now, I don't worry.

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

#257

Post by ada1981 »

veeralpatel979 wrote: post #240
ada1981 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 referring to Mailgun. 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.

Yeah I see how it sounded that way. Right the reverse is true, they are charging so little that if you have a customer it’s still almost free.

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

#259

Post by cx42net »

gwittel wrote: post #230
quicksilver03 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You are right, most VPS provider for instance, don't give just one IPv6, but a full range. One might be able to implement a spamming server with rotating IPv6.

Spamhaus has released a "blocking strategy" for IPv6 to exactly address this issue: https://www.spamhaus.org/news/article/668/spamhaus-releases-...

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

#260

Post by cx42net »

pyuser583 wrote: post #237
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…

You want to try an impressive open source software project? Create a framework that takes an email forwarded to a given address, turns it into an HTTP request with a JSON body, and sends that HTTP request to webhook. 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. M…

You are 100% right. It started the same with our service; we bought back ImprovMX (I don't put the link as I'm not looking for publicity - just for reference) when it was just a 5$ droplet at Digital Ocean, and now we have 10 big servers, more than 700$ monthly cost (and I honestly think it's not that much) and have to handle all the messy parts of delivering an email.

It's easy to send an email, but it's way harder to ensure that the emails you send are delivered properly.

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