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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

#71

Post by gwittel »

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…

Sending at scale is the problem. A provider like Mailgun (aka an ESP), is a huge target for abuse. Free and low priced tiers are tricky since they need to draw in customers, but then get heavily abused.

tl;dr: Abuse ruins it for everyone.

I work on the filtering side of the world so I see a lot of the challenges that even purportedly good actors face. Each provider does better or worse at controlling abuse. These things all have a cost:

* 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).

* Dmarc/dkim/spf -- Passing validation can be hard since it requires your client to work with you.

* Abuse reports -- Likely huge volume

* Bounces -- They can count against the customer. How much is OK (e.g. AWS SES will cut you off if your bounce rate gets too high)?

* Throwaway account abuse -- Huge issue, this threshold is a simple hammer (so now bad guys need ~10x more throwaway accounts).

* Account takeover -- That good guy is now sending out crap. Now what?

* Post-abuse cleanup -- Good luck going around and working with major providers to get yourself unblocked. Its a huge time sink.

By using Mailgun, etc all of the above becomes their problem. On top of it they'll offer analytics, help crafting content that works in varying mail clients, etc.

A small business type sender doesn't need much of this (other than maybe the technical help). But at some point, the scales tip.

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

#72

Post by Jedd »

veeralpatel979 wrote: post #53

10k emails per month is generous. Maybe too generous. Selfishly I wish they didn't increase the price, but as a aspiring SaaS founder, it's totally fair that they did. They do provide value. But 625 emails per month amounts to around 20 emails per day. If you have 5 customers, then you can send them 4 emails per day. So not much. I wish they found a middle ground here.

> But 625 emails per month amounts to around 20 emails per day. If you have 5 customers, then you can send them 4 emails per day. So not much.

That's if you're sending email every day of the week.

If it's just Mon-Fr then it's 30 emails per day.

If you have 5 customers ... then you can hopefully afford USD$0.80 for 1000 emails / month.

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

#73

Post by bigiain »

prawn wrote: post #69
brudgers wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is having clients who expect free...or rather delivering free to clients who expect free. Your job isn't to save the client money on your services. If having your credit card on file provides value to the client, then charge the client. If it doesn't, charge them anyway because it has value to you.

We started with Mailgun when the free tier seemed established and permanent. No card required. Our CMS taps into their API. Then they required a unique phone number for each account and even that was a time sink getting clients to comprehend what was going on. I think some people underestimate how cost-sensitive some clients are. And how time poor some small businesses are.

> I think some people underestimate how cost-sensitive some clients are. And how time poor some small businesses are.

Those aren't "clients", they're "moochers".

If they're prepared to walk away because it costs them $35/month to send to their mailing list, you probably owe it to yourself/your business to spend your time seeking new better clients rather than talking them thru how to get stuff/service for less than $35/month... Your business should be "cost sensitive" as well...

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

#74

Post by veeralpatel979 »

ada1981 wrote: post #59
veeralpatel979 wrote: post #53

10k emails per month is generous. Maybe too generous. Selfishly I wish they didn't increase the price, but as a aspiring SaaS founder, it's totally fair that they did. They do provide value. But 625 emails per month amounts to around 20 emails per day. If you have 5 customers, then you can send them 4 emails per day. So not much. I wish they found a middle ground here.

Who cares though? If you have customers the cost to send an email is still almost zero.

Sure the marginal cost of sending another email might be zero. But typically you price based on what people are willing to pay -- not based on costs.

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

#75

Post by veeralpatel979 »

rapfaria wrote: post #61
veeralpatel979 wrote: post #53

10k emails per month is generous. Maybe too generous. Selfishly I wish they didn't increase the price, but as a aspiring SaaS founder, it's totally fair that they did. They do provide value. But 625 emails per month amounts to around 20 emails per day. If you have 5 customers, then you can send them 4 emails per day. So not much. I wish they found a middle ground here.

What service sends 4 e-mails to your inbox everyday?

Heroku, Sentry, Jira, GitHub, any service that's notifying me of events via email regardless of company size.

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

#76

Post by crankylinuxuser »

rapfaria wrote: post #61
veeralpatel979 wrote: post #53

10k emails per month is generous. Maybe too generous. Selfishly I wish they didn't increase the price, but as a aspiring SaaS founder, it's totally fair that they did. They do provide value. But 625 emails per month amounts to around 20 emails per day. If you have 5 customers, then you can send them 4 emails per day. So not much. I wish they found a middle ground here.

What service sends 4 e-mails to your inbox everyday?

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

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

#77

Post by memset »

Hi! So, for the past year I’ve been working on a self-hosted service to allow people to switch between different email providers at runtime. Basically, how can we make it easy for people to configure how, or when, to use a given SMTP provider, or do failover, when changes like this happen.

We don’t have a landing page or anything- just working code! Would anyone here like to see it working or be willing to share feedback?

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

#78

Post by redsymbol »

bigiain wrote: post #73
prawn wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We started with Mailgun when the free tier seemed established and permanent. No card required. Our CMS taps into their API. Then they required a unique phone number for each account and even that was a time sink getting clients to comprehend what was going on. I think some people underestimate how cost-sensitive some clients are. And how time poor some small businesses are.

> I think some people underestimate how cost-sensitive some clients are. And how time poor some small businesses are. Those aren't "clients", they're "moochers". If they're prepared to walk away because it costs them $35/month to send to their mailing list, you probably owe it to yourself/your business to spend your time seeking new better clients rather than talking them thru how to get stuff/service for less than $…

Exactly. My business lifted off when I realized my market isn't the people who benefit from what I'm selling. My market is people who benefit from what I'm selling, and are willing to pay for value.

Freeloaders are simply not in my market.

And with that focus, I've been able to exponentially improve the value of what my company provides.

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

#79

Post by zeefarmer »

ukyrgf wrote: post #35

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…

If you're staying on the Flex plan, it's true pay as you go, no need to pay up front.

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

#80

Post by prawn »

bigiain wrote: post #73
prawn wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We started with Mailgun when the free tier seemed established and permanent. No card required. Our CMS taps into their API. Then they required a unique phone number for each account and even that was a time sink getting clients to comprehend what was going on. I think some people underestimate how cost-sensitive some clients are. And how time poor some small businesses are.

> I think some people underestimate how cost-sensitive some clients are. And how time poor some small businesses are. Those aren't "clients", they're "moochers". If they're prepared to walk away because it costs them $35/month to send to their mailing list, you probably owe it to yourself/your business to spend your time seeking new better clients rather than talking them thru how to get stuff/service for less than $…

They are clients if they found us to provide a service they needed, and we can provide it in a profitable way.

Our business found Mailgun to be a great solution when we anticipated clients would stick under 10k/mo and not need a card on file. With Stripe, every time they pay their cut, they've had a sale. Every time they mail-out through MailChimp, it's to a list of customers.

We are usually using Mailgun to send transactional emails. I can't promise a client that they won't get a flurry of junk signups or password reset mailouts that hit their credit card.

The bottom 50% of the market is heading to self-serve site-builders and it's savage for a small web business.

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