9 ms·

MoonMail: Serverless Framework for Sending Emails Using AWS SES and Lambda

77 points by yarapavan 10y ago

shunyaloop 10y ago
Any one used this? How does this compare with sendy?
tomc1985 10y ago
"Serverless".... hah!
benwilber0 10y ago
I mean, it's not serverless. It's just somebody else's server.
- deadcast 10y ago
  Yeah this new marketing speak is really confusing sometimes. :/
- RubenSandwich 10y ago
  Serverless in this context means a simple stateless function connected to an API endpoint without having to setup your own server for the function to be connected to. I agree that the 'serverless' name can be confusing as ultimately it still uses a server, it's just abstracted away. Perhaps 'stateless API endpoint function' is a better name, but that doesn't roll off the tongue very well...
  - sidlls 10y ago
    It's not stateless, either, in the same way it's not serverless (that is, it's somebody else's state). There are security and other issues that are important to consider when sending traffic over a network, and I find that calling this sort of thing "serverless" or "stateless" a bit misleading.
    - haimez 10y ago
      Added bonus: extremely difficult to reason about failure modes. Hope you didn't want to read any logs or measure the cold-start latency of your "function".
  - aikah 10y ago
    > Serverless in this context means ... You know what is going to happen. Because it's a marketing buzzword it will be added to everything and anything and won't even mean what you think it means anymore. Just like "cloud" or "microservice". Then it will end up sounding bad anyway. Do you still market your products with "web 2.0" moniker ? That's right, you don't. I can't take people using the word "serverless" seriously to begin with.
    - eumoria 10y ago
      "serverless" now seems to mean just no server at YOUR site. it does not mean what I always read it as in peers/clients only
      - danneu 10y ago
        Seems that "serverless" just means AWS Lambda is involved. For example, http://apex.run/ http://apex.run/.
        Jtsummers 10y ago
        Or Google Cloud Functions or Azure Functions. But AWS Lambda seems to be the one that gets all the coverage (was it first?).
        bdcravens 10y ago
        It was first among those 3 (GCF isn't even out of closed alpha at this point)
      - vertex-four 10y ago
        It means you're not managing a server OS. You're not even building a container. You're defining a function (as in, "fn foo(a, b): return a+b") which is called in somebody else's environment, and they have complete control over how your function is run - you're not dealing with autoscaling or whatever yourself.
- razwall 10y ago
  Yeah man, people should say what they mean. Like, I bought a new wireless phone the other day, and when I cracked it open, there were a bunch of wires inside! WTF?
- brazzledazzle 10y ago
  Sometimes you just have to limit the cynicism and accept that some terms are popular regardless of their literal accuracy or vagueness. Look at how the people who hated on "cloud" are perceived today. Shockingly some of them are still doing it. When those people were saying the cloud was someone else's hardware or servers they weren't really saying anything at all. I'm sure there's anecdotes about clueless PMs to prove the exception but no one actually thinks it's magic pixie dust underneath it all. They just don't talk about it because generally they don't need to think about it. And as much as it pains the cynic in me to say it, just because something is a marketing term doesn't mean it's bad. Even without a strict definition a single word that replaces several words, sentences or paragraphs is really useful for communication even if it makes it less approachable to people that are new to it. Could you imagine going to "function that runs on demand on someone else's server Conf 2016"? Or how unwieldy discussions during it would be? And yeah, there's probably a better single word out there for it but that's an uphill battle I'm glad I'm not fighting.
impostervt 10y ago
Under pricing, for Professional, $9.99/month + $0.7/ every 1000 emails sent. Is that $0.70 or $0.07 per thousand?
- dc_gregory 10y ago
  Reads as $0.7 per thousand for me.
  - SteveNuts 10y ago
    This exchange reminded me of this video of the guy frustrated with Verizon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zN9LZ3ojnxY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zN9LZ3ojnxY
untilHellbanned 10y ago
Why does serverless matter? I use MailChimp or Sendgrid and never deal with their servers. How does this product differ/improve on what's out there? Also, why is Lambda important? I have no idea what Lambda is. It's pretty easy to use AWS SES from 20-30 lines of code in a single script to send emails, so more "Why would I use this over existing solutions?" would be helpful.
- wgj 10y ago
  It shouldn't matter to the customer, but at its best, serverless can reduce ops and reduce cost. Lambda doesn't make it easier to use SES. It does make it easier to not rely on ec2 for the same workload.
- imglorp 10y ago
  For low traffic volumes, lambda is better than an instance because it scales back or goes away altogether when idle, so it's pay per call really, instead of pay per instance-hour. It's probably a bad idea for high volumes. They also have some nice integrations with other AWS components like S3, dynamo and api gateway, if those float your boat. Eg trigger a lambda function if someone writes a file into S3.
jonathanbull 10y ago
Impressive stuff. If you're looking for a managed alternative, check out https://emailoctopus.com https://emailoctopus.com (disclaimer: I'm a co-founder).
seanc 10y ago
Forgive me, but without DKIM, reverse DNS and such, aren't these messages destined straight for the spam folder?
- ShakataGaNai 10y ago
  SES supports DKIM (and DMARC and SPF). It has reverse DNS, just not for your domain (that's mostly just useful for whitelabeling). The biggest two problems are that A) You're using AWS SES (which lots of people do, so it doesn't have a great rep) and B) You don't have a static IP address (So again, you're sharing the email IP reputation with everyone else). So it will work, but you may not get the best deliverability. Of course, if you're users interact with you already it may not matter and get delivered just fine. Also seeing is how this is a shit ton cheaper than the "big" players (like Marketo and Eloqua) it might be a good stopgap for someone who wants to send lots and lots of emails but can't afford the expensive toys.
  - zwily 10y ago
    If you send enough email, SES will give you dedicated IP addresses.
alexandresaiz 10y ago
New paradigm for email marketing. The cheapest, most reliable SES SAAS tool on the planet. Check https://moonmail.io https://moonmail.io and stay tuned because big changes are approaching! (Disclaimer: I'm the MoonMail founder)...

77 points by yarapavan 10y ago

shunyaloop 10y ago

Any one used this? How does this compare with sendy?

tomc1985 10y ago

"Serverless".... hah!

benwilber0 10y ago

I mean, it's not serverless. It's just somebody else's server.

deadcast 10y ago
Yeah this new marketing speak is really confusing sometimes. :/
RubenSandwich 10y ago
Serverless in this context means a simple stateless function connected to an API endpoint without having to setup your own server for the function to be connected to. I agree that the 'serverless' name can be confusing as ultimately it still uses a server, it's just abstracted away. Perhaps 'stateless API endpoint function' is a better name, but that doesn't roll off the tongue very well...
- sidlls 10y ago
  It's not stateless, either, in the same way it's not serverless (that is, it's somebody else's state). There are security and other issues that are important to consider when sending traffic over a network, and I find that calling this sort of thing "serverless" or "stateless" a bit misleading.
  - haimez 10y ago
    Added bonus: extremely difficult to reason about failure modes. Hope you didn't want to read any logs or measure the cold-start latency of your "function".
- aikah 10y ago
  > Serverless in this context means ... You know what is going to happen. Because it's a marketing buzzword it will be added to everything and anything and won't even mean what you think it means anymore. Just like "cloud" or "microservice". Then it will end up sounding bad anyway. Do you still market your products with "web 2.0" moniker ? That's right, you don't. I can't take people using the word "serverless" seriously to begin with.
  - eumoria 10y ago
    "serverless" now seems to mean just no server at YOUR site. it does not mean what I always read it as in peers/clients only
    - danneu 10y ago
      Seems that "serverless" just means AWS Lambda is involved. For example, http://apex.run/ http://apex.run/.
      - Jtsummers 10y ago
        Or Google Cloud Functions or Azure Functions. But AWS Lambda seems to be the one that gets all the coverage (was it first?).
        bdcravens 10y ago
        It was first among those 3 (GCF isn't even out of closed alpha at this point)
    - vertex-four 10y ago
      It means you're not managing a server OS. You're not even building a container. You're defining a function (as in, "fn foo(a, b): return a+b") which is called in somebody else's environment, and they have complete control over how your function is run - you're not dealing with autoscaling or whatever yourself.
razwall 10y ago
Yeah man, people should say what they mean. Like, I bought a new wireless phone the other day, and when I cracked it open, there were a bunch of wires inside! WTF?
brazzledazzle 10y ago
Sometimes you just have to limit the cynicism and accept that some terms are popular regardless of their literal accuracy or vagueness. Look at how the people who hated on "cloud" are perceived today. Shockingly some of them are still doing it. When those people were saying the cloud was someone else's hardware or servers they weren't really saying anything at all. I'm sure there's anecdotes about clueless PMs to prove the exception but no one actually thinks it's magic pixie dust underneath it all. They just don't talk about it because generally they don't need to think about it. And as much as it pains the cynic in me to say it, just because something is a marketing term doesn't mean it's bad. Even without a strict definition a single word that replaces several words, sentences or paragraphs is really useful for communication even if it makes it less approachable to people that are new to it. Could you imagine going to "function that runs on demand on someone else's server Conf 2016"? Or how unwieldy discussions during it would be? And yeah, there's probably a better single word out there for it but that's an uphill battle I'm glad I'm not fighting.

impostervt 10y ago

Under pricing, for Professional, $9.99/month + $0.7/ every 1000 emails sent. Is that $0.70 or $0.07 per thousand?

dc_gregory 10y ago
Reads as $0.7 per thousand for me.
- SteveNuts 10y ago
  This exchange reminded me of this video of the guy frustrated with Verizon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zN9LZ3ojnxY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zN9LZ3ojnxY

untilHellbanned 10y ago

Why does serverless matter? I use MailChimp or Sendgrid and never deal with their servers. How does this product differ/improve on what's out there? Also, why is Lambda important? I have no idea what Lambda is. It's pretty easy to use AWS SES from 20-30 lines of code in a single script to send emails, so more "Why would I use this over existing solutions?" would be helpful.

wgj 10y ago
It shouldn't matter to the customer, but at its best, serverless can reduce ops and reduce cost. Lambda doesn't make it easier to use SES. It does make it easier to not rely on ec2 for the same workload.
imglorp 10y ago
For low traffic volumes, lambda is better than an instance because it scales back or goes away altogether when idle, so it's pay per call really, instead of pay per instance-hour. It's probably a bad idea for high volumes. They also have some nice integrations with other AWS components like S3, dynamo and api gateway, if those float your boat. Eg trigger a lambda function if someone writes a file into S3.

jonathanbull 10y ago

Impressive stuff. If you're looking for a managed alternative, check out https://emailoctopus.com https://emailoctopus.com (disclaimer: I'm a co-founder).

seanc 10y ago

Forgive me, but without DKIM, reverse DNS and such, aren't these messages destined straight for the spam folder?

ShakataGaNai 10y ago
SES supports DKIM (and DMARC and SPF). It has reverse DNS, just not for your domain (that's mostly just useful for whitelabeling). The biggest two problems are that A) You're using AWS SES (which lots of people do, so it doesn't have a great rep) and B) You don't have a static IP address (So again, you're sharing the email IP reputation with everyone else). So it will work, but you may not get the best deliverability. Of course, if you're users interact with you already it may not matter and get delivered just fine. Also seeing is how this is a shit ton cheaper than the "big" players (like Marketo and Eloqua) it might be a good stopgap for someone who wants to send lots and lots of emails but can't afford the expensive toys.
- zwily 10y ago
  If you send enough email, SES will give you dedicated IP addresses.

alexandresaiz 10y ago

New paradigm for email marketing. The cheapest, most reliable SES SAAS tool on the planet. Check https://moonmail.io https://moonmail.io and stay tuned because big changes are approaching! (Disclaimer: I'm the MoonMail founder)...