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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

#31

Post by Eikon »

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…

> despite sending an email being an utterly trivial, long solved problem.

It is absolutely not. Even if you are not considering the whole spam thing.

Sending an email with the multitude of clients, MIME which is very complex in itself, network issues, message queuing, retries, unsubscription, bounces, providers feedback loops, rate limiting and what not is very hard.

If you add the whole spam folder + blacklists situation into consideration, sending emails becomes a more than painful thing you don't want to deal with.

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

#33

Post by KaoruAoiShiho »

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…

Needs to be self hosted or otherwise it's just another mailgun.

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

#35

Post by ukyrgf »

I submitted this under the title "Mailgun eliminates 'Concept' plan, no longer offering 10000 free emails/mo(https://www.mailgun.com/pricing)" but it was a dupe. I think mine might be a bit more descriptive title, though. They are not offering 625 for free. There is a 3 month trial that gives you 5,000 emails.

Does anybody know the $0.0008/email is the real pricing, or if you have to pay $0.80/1000 up front like the footer of the price table says?

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

#37

Post by xwowsersx »

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…

It is clearly not trivial though. I get that it feels like it should be and probably is if you're sending a few emails, but "at scale" (pardon the buzzword) it is not trivial hence why people use these services.

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

#38

Post by neogodless »

I've been happy with Mailgun for free, super low volume sites (i.e. single digit emails per month.) However, I've been shopping around for alternatives because I have a domain that won't pass their dashboard validation of DNS records. I checked DNS from a wide variety of other tools, and everything works. I waited weeks but the dashboard still reports problems, but it doesn't tell me _what_ the problem is, and their support, naturally, isn't the best at the free tier. So I couldn't get any help from them on what the problem was. I'm open to the idea that I misconfigured DNS, despite it matching other domains, and the DNS tools validating my work, but without someone on their end giving me debugging information, I haven't been able to solve my issue, and have to use an alternative.

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

#39

Post by avolcano »

yangity wrote: post #3

I think 10000 was probably too generous, but 625 also seems a bit too little as well for hobbyists.

As someone who has a noncommercial side project and has been using SendGrid's free 100/day plan, I'm actually thinking of switching to this. I've always been a bit concerned with what would happen if my app got a sudden burst of signups (since email verification is required to sign up), and have been looking for an uncapped plan, but don't want to spend $10 a month or more just for that possibility.

The key here is that with the $0.80/1000 emails PAYG rate, you can still do like 2000-3000 a month for less than $5, which no one except SES will provide. Everyone else has a gulf between "free tier 100/day" (or even 100/month with Postmark) and their first actual paid tier ($10/month for Postmark, $15/month for SendGrid). No one else except SES has this PAYG for low rates as far as I'm aware. I think if your hobby project needs more than 625 emails a month, it's reasonable to spend a dollar or two on a month to handle that.

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

#40

Post by m4tthumphrey »

Whoa. Thank you so much for telling me this. I am literally in the middle of a one-day project to send nearly 10k emails and have been using the free tier for years with no issues. I was just thinking today about how good the free tier is. I am not surprised they are making this change. I will gladly upgrade, Mailgun provide a great service and I have never had an issue.
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