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Postmark has been acquired by ActiveCampaign

wildbit.com

61–68 of 68 posts

Re: Postmark has been acquired by ActiveCampaign

#61

What are some other options in this space? What I need: - Focus on transactional email. - Support for inbound emails, sent to us via POST webhook. - Good developer documentation and overall good product obviously. - DKIM, SPF and DMARC support. - Decent UI to troubleshoot delivery problems, i.e. easy to inspect the status for any one email. - Happy to pay for it, price not a big factor. I've looked at Mailgun, but ha…

just transitioned a client off mailgun due to repeated deliverability issues caused by other mailgun customers on a shared IP. The client doesn't have enough email volume to justify a dedicated IP, so there didn't seem to be anything else we could do while sticking with mailgun.

wouldn't you know it, we transferred them to postmark...

Re: Postmark has been acquired by ActiveCampaign

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder why there was no employee buyout. I suspect it wasn't the most attractive offer from the perspective of the current owners. Even assuming that employees wanted to own this business… how do you envision that employees would have funded an offer? I guess you could propose that they raise outside debt to be serviced by the business (like any other LBO), plus contribute their own funds as a 10-40% equity cushi…

Presumably the owners already have more money than they will need to live a comfortable life. Why not just give it to the employees?

sweet summer child…

Re: Postmark has been acquired by ActiveCampaign

#63
post #20
post #18

Wildbit has sold the family business work-for-other-reasons-than-monetary-renumeration trope for a couple of decades. They've had some great products like Beanstalk and Deploybot and some total follies like Converyor. Employees had no ownership, products were often sold or put up for sale, and my understand is that compensation was middle of the road at best. It was 37Signals-lite. They seem like good people, but if…

> Wildbit has sold the family business work-for-other-reasons-than-monetary-renumeration trope for a couple of decades. I didn't realize this was a pattern with them before now (selling out). I was using Postmark specifically because it was (I thought) a sort of mom and pop type business. There are cheaper and better options, but sending emails was always such a small expense for me that I didn't care. I don't mean t…

Are you rethinking that perspective in light of how the valuable distinction might have less to do with big vs small capitalist and more something to do with the workers

Re: Postmark has been acquired by ActiveCampaign

#64
post #38

Extremely mixed feelings on this one. On one hand, it's awesome Wildbit was able to sell Postmark on their terms. To be able to build something, make money, and then walk away when you want is a huge accomplishment. Hats off to them. On the other hand, the reason I always chose Postmark over Sendgrid, MailChimp, et cetera, even though they were much smaller, is because they seriously cared about their customers. Supp…

Give MailPace a try [0]. The creator seems like a great guy, and the service does what it says without any bs. I've been using it for a while now for side projects, and can only recommmend it. 0: https://mailpace.com/

I can somewhat vouch for MailPace. I wrote the Rust library for it and talking with them was very straightforward (getting a free key to test, testing the library's functionality, etc) and he was very responsive and knowledgeable, even installing the Rust compiler to test. That said I haven't actually used it to deliver critical mail.

The delivery latency being published on their home page is another nice touch that shows they are dedicated to transparency.

Re: Postmark has been acquired by ActiveCampaign

#65

What are some other options in this space? What I need: - Focus on transactional email. - Support for inbound emails, sent to us via POST webhook. - Good developer documentation and overall good product obviously. - DKIM, SPF and DMARC support. - Decent UI to troubleshoot delivery problems, i.e. easy to inspect the status for any one email. - Happy to pay for it, price not a big factor. I've looked at Mailgun, but ha…

I now use Postal Server for all my SaaS, which is self-hosted via docker, and has all those those features. The good thing is your maintain the IP reputation yourself and your not paying exorbitant prices when sending large volumes of transactional emails (really it's just the cost of the server you install it on).

https://github.com/postalserver/postal

Re: Postmark has been acquired by ActiveCampaign

#66
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wildbit has sold the family business work-for-other-reasons-than-monetary-renumeration trope for a couple of decades. I didn't realize this was a pattern with them before now (selling out). I was using Postmark specifically because it was (I thought) a sort of mom and pop type business. There are cheaper and better options, but sending emails was always such a small expense for me that I didn't care. I don't mean t…

Are you rethinking that perspective in light of how the valuable distinction might have less to do with big vs small capitalist and more something to do with the workers

More of a general approach I apply whenever I can. I prefer supporting smaller lifestyle businesses for market diversity. This may or may not be good for employees specifically, it’s more about having a healthy market (by my own narrow definition I suppose).

Obviously I don’t assume I’m making a difference :) but it’s kind of like voting. If a good small alternative exists and I can afford it, then that’s what I’ll use.

Re: Postmark has been acquired by ActiveCampaign

#67
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wildbit has sold the family business work-for-other-reasons-than-monetary-renumeration trope for a couple of decades. I didn't realize this was a pattern with them before now (selling out). I was using Postmark specifically because it was (I thought) a sort of mom and pop type business. There are cheaper and better options, but sending emails was always such a small expense for me that I didn't care. I don't mean t…

It's not a pattern, the original comment is nonsense: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31247296#31250037

Understood. I’ll do my own research.
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