7 ms·

I had exactly the same experience. For context I run a SaaS targetting small/medium businesses, who usually have in-house email servers with extremely restricti

I had exactly the same experience. For context I run a SaaS targetting small/medium businesses, who usually have in-house email servers with extremely restrictive spam filters. The IP was on a blacklist, so some of my customers just couldn't use my service. I contacted SendGrid and their only solution was to upgrade from a $20/mo plan to a $80/mo plan with a dedicated IP - they wouldn't even move me to another IP in the pool. Given this, and my volumes of mail were increasing (once you go over 100k emails/mo SendGrid's pricing goes up a lot), I setup my own mail server using Cuttlefish [0]. I set it up on an OVH instance that I pay £2.50/mo for. I contacted them to enquire about spam policies before opening an account, and they said they take it very seriously and monitor outgoing SMTP for spam. The IP address I ended up with was still on one blacklist, but the process to remove it was pretty easy (fill out a form, and explain the situation) and took about 1 day. I set this up around 6 months ago and have had no problems with deliverability since then, I'm now up to sending around 300k emails per month. [0] https://github.com/basho/cuttlefish https://github.com/basho/cuttlefish

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
erlend_sh 10y ago
I think you meant to link here: https://cuttlefish.io https://cuttlefish.io https://github.com/mlandauer/cuttlefish https://github.com/mlandauer/cuttlefish
- lucaspiller 9y ago
  Oops :D
jjeaff 10y ago
Unless you are doing a TON of sending, you are better off with a shared ip since it will have a known reputation. That is assuming that the provider is maintaining the integrity of those allowed to send with that ip. I haven't used sendgrid, but mailgun has been good about moving me off of any ip I don't like. Although I wish they were more proactive about it, I have setup a weekly monitoring script to check a bunch of the blacklists. If there are any issues, I will have them move me. And I am still on the free tier so I can't complain.
- lucaspiller 9y ago
  I've been doing this for 6 months now, and haven't had any issues. Over the last 7 days my deliverability of 64k emails has been 99.5%. The only bounces I have are because of invalid email addresses or mailboxes being full. I didn't do any 'warming up' of the IP when started, I just started sending. I've heard this many times, and maybe it was true before but it doesn't seem to be any more. I suspect now companies like Sendgrid still spread this FUD so people are more willing to buy their services and assume it's the only option.
  - jjeaff 9y ago
    I'm curious to know what type of customer you have? My customer base is made up of quite a few less tech-savvy types and we get a lot of issues with spam for AOL and MSN accounts. And I don't show any bounces either. Stuff getting sent to spam doesn't give you a bounce message usually. It will appear to have been delivered successfully. As for needing to warm up the IP, I think there is still something to that. I am surprised you were able to just start right off sending large volume. My guess would be that that you lucked out and got a gently used IP address by chance. The fact that it was on a blacklist would indicate that it probably was previously used rather heavily... just enough to get blacklisted at one place. But not abused in a way that got it blacklisted other places.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

erlend_sh 10y ago

I think you meant to link here: https://cuttlefish.io https://cuttlefish.io https://github.com/mlandauer/cuttlefish https://github.com/mlandauer/cuttlefish

lucaspiller 9y ago
Oops :D

jjeaff 10y ago

Unless you are doing a TON of sending, you are better off with a shared ip since it will have a known reputation. That is assuming that the provider is maintaining the integrity of those allowed to send with that ip. I haven't used sendgrid, but mailgun has been good about moving me off of any ip I don't like. Although I wish they were more proactive about it, I have setup a weekly monitoring script to check a bunch of the blacklists. If there are any issues, I will have them move me. And I am still on the free tier so I can't complain.

lucaspiller 9y ago
I've been doing this for 6 months now, and haven't had any issues. Over the last 7 days my deliverability of 64k emails has been 99.5%. The only bounces I have are because of invalid email addresses or mailboxes being full. I didn't do any 'warming up' of the IP when started, I just started sending. I've heard this many times, and maybe it was true before but it doesn't seem to be any more. I suspect now companies like Sendgrid still spread this FUD so people are more willing to buy their services and assume it's the only option.
- jjeaff 9y ago
  I'm curious to know what type of customer you have? My customer base is made up of quite a few less tech-savvy types and we get a lot of issues with spam for AOL and MSN accounts. And I don't show any bounces either. Stuff getting sent to spam doesn't give you a bounce message usually. It will appear to have been delivered successfully. As for needing to warm up the IP, I think there is still something to that. I am surprised you were able to just start right off sending large volume. My guess would be that that you lucked out and got a gently used IP address by chance. The fact that it was on a blacklist would indicate that it probably was previously used rather heavily... just enough to get blacklisted at one place. But not abused in a way that got it blacklisted other places.