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

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 272 posts

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

#41

Post by kick »

Eikon wrote: post #31
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 situ…

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 to send an attachment given the software on hand.

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

#43

Post by ebiester »

kick wrote: post #41
Eikon wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 situ…

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…

You can still do that.

However, I, as a receiver of email, get thousands of spam messages a day. So, I use services that block them before they even reach my view, or get sent directly to the spam folder.

If you want to send me an email, that's solved. If you want to send it to ten thousand people on your mailing list, and not have it end up in the spam folder, you may have more work.

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

#45

Post by space_ghost »

kick wrote: post #41
Eikon wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 situ…

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…

You're both right, but you're solving different problems. Just because your message got past your spam filter doesn't mean it would get past all spam filters.

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

#46

Post by donmcronald »

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…

Mailgun is (was) great for setting up a quick regex to process incoming mail. Maybe I'm misusing it, but I point all my non-email domains there and let this regex forward everything to my main domain:

^(abuse@|hostmaster@|postmaster@|webmaster@).*

I'd gladly pay $.0008 per message x2 to cover both sides of that event because I have very little usage. By putting email receiving into a tier that costs over $400 per year they've priced me out of the service.

It's disappointing the way these companies are happy to have enthusiasts, hobbyists, and side projects light-housing their products for them at the start, but eventually switch to paid tiers that alienate those same types of early adopters. It feels like it happens with every single service I use.

Boo!

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

#47

Post by kick »

space_ghost wrote: post #45
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…

You're both right, but you're solving different problems. Just because your message got past your spam filter doesn't mean it would get past all spam filters.

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

They specified that it wasn't even if you could ignore the spam issue. I said that it was if you ignored the spam issue. The first post in this thread was "We've made sending electronic mail way too complicated under the guise of fighting spam."

I'm aware that it won't get past every spam filter, but it gets past both Gmail's and my own provider (a smaller, non-American one), which is good enough for my own use. My claim was that sending electronic mail is a solved problem, because it is.

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

#48

Post by cosmotic »

kick wrote: post #41
Eikon wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 situ…

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…

Most ISPs block SMTP traffic, which creates a pretty significant barrier to sending email. Even VPS services send through a secret gateways with all sorts of filters and controls on it.

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

#49

Post by bigtunacan »

ebiester wrote: post #43
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…

You can still do that. However, I, as a receiver of email, get thousands of spam messages a day. So, I use services that block them before they even reach my view, or get sent directly to the spam folder. If you want to send me an email, that's solved. If you want to send it to ten thousand people on your mailing list, and not have it end up in the spam folder, you may have more work.

Please explain the difference to me. Mailgun is sending tons and tons of spam email; what is so special about them that they aren't ending up in people's spam/junk folders?

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

#50

Post by ruffrey »

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…

I've been running a SaaS in the email space since 2011. It is not surprising at all, to me, that Mailgun decided to do this.

Sending an email _is_ trivial - you're right - but getting it delivered to the inbox, instead of the spam folder, is far from trivial. At scale, it is incredibly difficult. Even worse, spammers and fraudsters are utterly relentless. They hammer services like mine and Mailgun's constantly with fraud and phishing and porn and other garbage, inbound and outbound.

Post reply on HN