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In a previous job we tried to mimic Mediums "email only - no password" login infrastructure using mandrill. Whereby a user clicks 'login', a session token is ge

by woodcut 11y ago

In a previous job we tried to mimic Mediums "email only - no password" login infrastructure using mandrill. Whereby a user clicks 'login', a session token is generated and a link sent in an email, the user clicks it and is then logged in - no password needed. sounds great... It turned out that in production, even after all the hoops that were there to be jumped the bounce rate was around 5% and some of the messages that did get through took around ~15 mins to turn up in the users inbox. I don't think much of this is Mandrills fault but up to that point i had little inkling of how bad email is for communicating en mass.

vram22 11y ago
Email is not supposed to be necessarily near real time, I think (not an expert though). Not sure of the details at the protocol level, but my guess is that it may work differently from HTTP, due to being older, and invented in the time of UUCP, IBM email, etc., some of which involved store-and-forward techniques, mail queue files, etc. (I've used UUCP email back in the day, at one company I worked at. We used to have to dial up the other city's modem and then go through a slightly arcane dance of Unix commands to send the email on its way, or receive email from other branch offices. Fun times ... When it first became available, I remember using it a good amount to download tech articles from various sites via Internet-over-email methods, such as ftp to rtfm.mit.edu via email :) There was even a chapter about that in a Dummies book. And there's an Internet FAQ about it at faqs.org, or there was.