Needs some sort of webhook / API access through your dashboard.
I'd be interested in running a cronjob with my custom SQL and sending you a batch payload to process the emails.
Show HN: I made a MailChimp alternative that connects to your database
51–60 of 105 posts
Re: Show HN: I made a MailChimp alternative that connects to your database
#52How do you manage reputation?
Emails are sent using your own AWS SES account, which will handle all of that. No real concern of people sending spam because they would be damaging their own SES reputation.
This is only true if you are using dedicated IPs with SES (~$30/month each). However, SES is pretty good at managing IP reputation even for the shared IP service, and I haven't had any issues in over 10 years of building systems on top of it.
Re: Show HN: I made a MailChimp alternative that connects to your database
#53Major problem with this is that your customers should ideally never expose their databases for public access.
Devils advocate here: if you created a database user, which has access to a single View of with email, name, and whatever relevant subscription properties, how is that functionally different than what everyone does today which is to set up some Rube Goldberg contraption to pipe that audience information to mailchimp, sendgrid, or exacttarget? Personally, I find this really intriguing and think it would be much better…
you'd still be exposing the database system itself to the public regardless of the credentials you were using for the email service, as opposed to keeping it all within a VPC which seems to be what most guides recommend.
I assume the difference would be that having your database exposed presents additional surface area for attacks. A rube-goldberg style setup probably presents its own risks, but personally I just use AWS SES for my transactional/marketing emails and it's a one-way pipe that doesn't present any significant risks as far as I can see.
Re: Show HN: I made a MailChimp alternative that connects to your database
#54great work! Useful option!! 250,000 emails at $44/mo (including SES fee).
Currently paying $25 to send 250,000 emails with sendy.co for years. Also using Amazon SES. no monthly fees just pay for what you use plus one time cost of sendy.
Re: Show HN: I made a MailChimp alternative that connects to your database
#55The audience for this is so technical, that they just build this functionality themselves into their own app :)
Re: Show HN: I made a MailChimp alternative that connects to your database
#56Congrats on the launch! Lots of really good stuff going on here, a few bits of feedback, ideas, etc, and also responding to some of the comments in other threads. * The quick explanation of how this works is pretty strong, but I think the differentiator/value over other services maybe isn't called out as well. To me, this seems pretty clearly ideal for smaller teams all in on JAMstack/serverless with a lean stack tha…
Amazing points, thanks so much! Totally agree with you on the docs. I'll definitely look into creating some sort of agent (or some other solution), but I agree that some docs explaining everything will ease the minds of those who are on the fence. Hm interesting point on the open sourcing and monetization. I've been thinking a lot about this and still not sure if it's wise to open source it. I definitely want to gene…
I should say... Open source can be a great way to get a community of users, with a subset that will opt not to self-host, but, I think there are a lot of things to consider:
* Can you shepherd a community, that will have issues with self-hosting, prs, bugs, etc AND do all the stuff needed to run a company (once again, assuming one person show here)
* By going open source, you now are also "competing" with other OSS projects, which may drive toward features that don't drive value on commercial side. You may also find that the core value prop just doesn't translate well to open source, for example, if the target is JAMstack teams and you can't run this on vercel, cloudflare, fly, etc
* I think the most successful open projects like this tend to be something that is a segment only really solved by proprietary companies. For example, workflow automation like Zapier built a novel model and led to open source with hosted version projects like n8n to replicate that, with many people offering that as a service inside their company. I think "open source MailChimp" isn't a bad play, but I don't know if that is really what you are doing, so it is hard to say if open sourcing would led to sales or to useful software that no one wants to pay for
Re: Show HN: I made a MailChimp alternative that connects to your database
#57Having your database exposed on the public internet so a third party service like this can read it directly is a very bad idea IMO. I get what your going for but the end here is some mom and pop getting their database compromised.
Re: Show HN: I made a MailChimp alternative that connects to your database
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Devils advocate here: if you created a database user, which has access to a single View of with email, name, and whatever relevant subscription properties, how is that functionally different than what everyone does today which is to set up some Rube Goldberg contraption to pipe that audience information to mailchimp, sendgrid, or exacttarget? Personally, I find this really intriguing and think it would be much better…
you'd still be exposing the database system itself to the public regardless of the credentials you were using for the email service, as opposed to keeping it all within a VPC which seems to be what most guides recommend. I assume the difference would be that having your database exposed presents additional surface area for attacks. A rube-goldberg style setup probably presents its own risks, but personally I just use…
Using a public facing database, but using an IP address allow-list to restrict access is pretty secure. cc should publish the IP addresses they use.
Re: Show HN: I made a MailChimp alternative that connects to your database
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Very legitimate concern and one I've been thinking about a lot. Honestly, I think the best way to address this is to just go open source, which I'm totally open to. I think once I've validated the idea a bit and know it's something people are interested in, I'll focus on this issue and come up with a solution (whether it's open sourcing or something else)
Going open source will not solve your problems. The issue is that youre asking customers to open database access to you/your company. The reason why the method youve chosen isnt already out there is because of all the implications it has. You better have one hell of a security team to ensure youre locked down tighter than a ducks ass. Look at how many data breaches there have been, even in the past year. The solution…
A self hosted AMI/container - with a config UX. Simple solve.
Re: Show HN: I made a MailChimp alternative that connects to your database
#60I think there are some good ideas here, but the target audience imho is not clear. Email marketing cheaper is a great attention grabber: kudos for the good copywriting. Step 1: Link to AWS SES... humm, for that your target audience must be tech-savvy. Step 2: Query your database... humm, linking my database to a strange system? No freaking way! But assume for an instant that this would be ok. For this, your target au…
The target market is someone who 1. is tech-savvy and runs an app/service with a bunch of users 2. has tried existing emailing platforms and feel that they're too expensive 3. wants full freedom of who they target their emails to A tech-savvy person could make their own solution, and that's what I wanted to do with my site CubeDesk, but it's surprisingly difficult and time-consuming, which gave me the idea for this s…
Also target audience here. I second the views of sibling post.