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The article is missing deliverability stats. Sure, you can reduce your bill significantly by switching to SES, but that means nothing if all of your emails are

by dogas 9y ago

The article is missing deliverability stats. Sure, you can reduce your bill significantly by switching to SES, but that means nothing if all of your emails are being sent to a user's spam box or promos folder. Mailchimp does a lot out of the box to ensure deliverability and good email placement, and that's part of the cost you're paying for.

dordoka 9y ago
That question was asked in the first comment of the article and the author posted a screenshot of stats from his latest campaign if you want to check that out.
bobince 9y ago
Yep. My networks refuse all mail from amazonses, as it is almost entirely spam and the abuse contact is completely unresponsive. Mailchimp isn't spam-free but it stops the spammer hitting you straight away and has human follow-up for problem cases. If that increases the price of sending mail, so be it.
- kennydude 9y ago
  Amazon’s abuse system is automatic. At work we got a warning and then disabled after 15 minutes because people reported our emails as spam. (Apparently notifying someone they are in debt counts as spam to some)
  - TallGuyShort 9y ago
    I'm curious - do you work for a debt collector? I ask because I've been sent to collections multiple times over medical bills, and every single time it has taken hours of effort to eventually reveal that all of the documentation given to the debt collector was erroneous. Mentally, I treat it as spam because I've learned that it's going to end up being someone else's mistake that the debt collector didn't look at carefully. I would love to understand better how to deal with it - and if there's a fellow HN user who understand the debt collector business, I would like to talk to them :)
    - ams6110 9y ago
      Always deal with debt collectors via snail mail, not phone calls or email.
      - pinko 9y ago
        Why?
        j_s 9y ago
        Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15206926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15206926 (Sep 2017, 276 comments) >code4tee: The bit about calmly but methodically collecting a paper trail and then reading it back to them is excellent advice
        gruez 9y ago
        Less high pressure tactics and them verbally abusing you, plus it provides a paper trail of wrongdoing if they violate any laws.
      - TallGuyShort 9y ago
        Snail mail is very hard to prove that correspondence happened. State law requires that I dispute their claims within 30 days via snail mail, which I did. They then have to provide documentation within 30 days via snail mail, which they didn't. They should be fined for that, but all I can prove is that I mailed them something within 30 days, and everything else is he-said-she-said. I prefer to tell them I'm recording the phone call. Unfortunately, my state's laws don't require they cooperate that way, and many just hang up immediately. It does stop the harassment, though.
        sethammons 9y ago
        The US postal service provides certified delivery. It requires a signature and proves delivery. You show your proof, and if they can't show theirs, you win in small claims. At least, that is the idea...
  - wj 9y ago
    They probably feel like they didn't solicit that communication.
  - RandomInteger4 9y ago
    I don't think you should be surprised that people view debt collectors with massive disdain.
- inferiorhuman 9y ago
  > Mailchimp isn't spam-free but it stops the spammer hitting you straight away and has human follow-up for problem cases. If that increases the price of sending mail, so be it. Really? My attempts to get unsubscribed from a mailchip spam list were largely unsuccessful until I spammed as many mailchimp employees as I could find on LinkedIn. Mailchip offers zero support for those on the receiving end of their garbage.
  - bobince 9y ago
    I've always been able to get a response from replying to the initial response mail. Maybe I've just been lucky to have a different experience to you, but personally I've dealt with few more-responsive ESPs. (And obviously many, many total black holes—or what seems to be the new norm, automated systems completely unable to cope with deliberately malicious users and/or use of multiple accounts.)
    - inferiorhuman 9y ago
      Who do you mail when you get spam from mailchimp? I pasted the mail into their "abuse desk" form and got no response (but got continued spam from one of their users). I forwarded the message (headers intact) to abuse at mailchimp and rackspace. Nothing. Their reach a human forms are only for their spammers (err... customers). Honestly, the most absurd part is that mailchimp is opt-out by default. I never once got any sort of "verify you'd like to receive messages from this sender" sort of e-mail address. Obviously mailchimp has no incentive to make their delivery opt-in because it would cut down on the number of messages delivered. And, yes, you're right most of the alternatives are just as bad (e.g. Google, Sendgrid) from an end user point-of-view. I've had no regrets about blocking sendgrid and mailchimp.
      - sethammons 9y ago
        Have you ever thought, "huh, my {confirmation, receipt, password change request, etc} email never got here" for this site or service you either use or tried to use? If so, they were likely a customer of an ESP you blocked.
dajohnson89 9y ago
yep. switching from ses to sendgrid fixed a # of issues with false positive spam flaggings.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Curious, we switched from Sendgrid for that same reason. We were on the free plan, though.
  - dajohnson89 9y ago
    Interesting. We definitely had the paid version. (The pro plan IIRC). We had a couple of isolated incidents of spam flags, but it was less than 1% of receivers.
nothing-special 9y ago
The man hours saved each week alone made using the more expensive companies worth every penny. I'm not saying a company is better just because they are more expensive, but I will argue you get what you pay for in this industry.
sleepydog 9y ago
Indeed. I used to work for another big mail sending service, and you would not believe the amount of effort that goes into maintaining good deliverability. There was an entire team called "ISP relations" whose sole job was to work with big ISPs when one of our IPs get blacklisted. There was another team that would interview customers after their sending passed a certain threshold to see if they were following best practices. They would ask questions like * How did you collect your e-mail list? * Did your users give explicit approval to receive list e-mails? * Did you acquire this list indirectly, from another company/campaign? (big no-no). Usually everything was fine, or the customer didn't know they were doing something wrong, and they corrected it. But not infrequently a customer (who pays a decent chunk of money/month) would be told they can no longer use the product. Besides it being the "right thing" to do, having recipients block or report spammy senders worsens the reputation of IP addresses. An interesting exercise would be to calculate the number of man-hours put into maintaining the reputation of each IP address.

by dogas 9y ago

dordoka 9y ago

That question was asked in the first comment of the article and the author posted a screenshot of stats from his latest campaign if you want to check that out.

bobince 9y ago

Yep. My networks refuse all mail from amazonses, as it is almost entirely spam and the abuse contact is completely unresponsive. Mailchimp isn't spam-free but it stops the spammer hitting you straight away and has human follow-up for problem cases. If that increases the price of sending mail, so be it.

kennydude 9y ago
Amazon’s abuse system is automatic. At work we got a warning and then disabled after 15 minutes because people reported our emails as spam. (Apparently notifying someone they are in debt counts as spam to some)
- TallGuyShort 9y ago
  I'm curious - do you work for a debt collector? I ask because I've been sent to collections multiple times over medical bills, and every single time it has taken hours of effort to eventually reveal that all of the documentation given to the debt collector was erroneous. Mentally, I treat it as spam because I've learned that it's going to end up being someone else's mistake that the debt collector didn't look at carefully. I would love to understand better how to deal with it - and if there's a fellow HN user who understand the debt collector business, I would like to talk to them :)
  - ams6110 9y ago
    Always deal with debt collectors via snail mail, not phone calls or email.
    - pinko 9y ago
      Why?
      - j_s 9y ago
        Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15206926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15206926 (Sep 2017, 276 comments) >code4tee: The bit about calmly but methodically collecting a paper trail and then reading it back to them is excellent advice
      - gruez 9y ago
        Less high pressure tactics and them verbally abusing you, plus it provides a paper trail of wrongdoing if they violate any laws.
    - TallGuyShort 9y ago
      Snail mail is very hard to prove that correspondence happened. State law requires that I dispute their claims within 30 days via snail mail, which I did. They then have to provide documentation within 30 days via snail mail, which they didn't. They should be fined for that, but all I can prove is that I mailed them something within 30 days, and everything else is he-said-she-said. I prefer to tell them I'm recording the phone call. Unfortunately, my state's laws don't require they cooperate that way, and many just hang up immediately. It does stop the harassment, though.
      - sethammons 9y ago
        The US postal service provides certified delivery. It requires a signature and proves delivery. You show your proof, and if they can't show theirs, you win in small claims. At least, that is the idea...
- wj 9y ago
  They probably feel like they didn't solicit that communication.
- RandomInteger4 9y ago
  I don't think you should be surprised that people view debt collectors with massive disdain.
inferiorhuman 9y ago
> Mailchimp isn't spam-free but it stops the spammer hitting you straight away and has human follow-up for problem cases. If that increases the price of sending mail, so be it. Really? My attempts to get unsubscribed from a mailchip spam list were largely unsuccessful until I spammed as many mailchimp employees as I could find on LinkedIn. Mailchip offers zero support for those on the receiving end of their garbage.
- bobince 9y ago
  I've always been able to get a response from replying to the initial response mail. Maybe I've just been lucky to have a different experience to you, but personally I've dealt with few more-responsive ESPs. (And obviously many, many total black holes—or what seems to be the new norm, automated systems completely unable to cope with deliberately malicious users and/or use of multiple accounts.)
  - inferiorhuman 9y ago
    Who do you mail when you get spam from mailchimp? I pasted the mail into their "abuse desk" form and got no response (but got continued spam from one of their users). I forwarded the message (headers intact) to abuse at mailchimp and rackspace. Nothing. Their reach a human forms are only for their spammers (err... customers). Honestly, the most absurd part is that mailchimp is opt-out by default. I never once got any sort of "verify you'd like to receive messages from this sender" sort of e-mail address. Obviously mailchimp has no incentive to make their delivery opt-in because it would cut down on the number of messages delivered. And, yes, you're right most of the alternatives are just as bad (e.g. Google, Sendgrid) from an end user point-of-view. I've had no regrets about blocking sendgrid and mailchimp.
    - sethammons 9y ago
      Have you ever thought, "huh, my {confirmation, receipt, password change request, etc} email never got here" for this site or service you either use or tried to use? If so, they were likely a customer of an ESP you blocked.

dajohnson89 9y ago

yep. switching from ses to sendgrid fixed a # of issues with false positive spam flaggings.

icebraining 9y ago
Curious, we switched from Sendgrid for that same reason. We were on the free plan, though.
- dajohnson89 9y ago
  Interesting. We definitely had the paid version. (The pro plan IIRC). We had a couple of isolated incidents of spam flags, but it was less than 1% of receivers.

nothing-special 9y ago

The man hours saved each week alone made using the more expensive companies worth every penny. I'm not saying a company is better just because they are more expensive, but I will argue you get what you pay for in this industry.

sleepydog 9y ago

Indeed. I used to work for another big mail sending service, and you would not believe the amount of effort that goes into maintaining good deliverability. There was an entire team called "ISP relations" whose sole job was to work with big ISPs when one of our IPs get blacklisted. There was another team that would interview customers after their sending passed a certain threshold to see if they were following best practices. They would ask questions like * How did you collect your e-mail list? * Did your users give explicit approval to receive list e-mails? * Did you acquire this list indirectly, from another company/campaign? (big no-no). Usually everything was fine, or the customer didn't know they were doing something wrong, and they corrected it. But not infrequently a customer (who pays a decent chunk of money/month) would be told they can no longer use the product. Besides it being the "right thing" to do, having recipients block or report spammy senders worsens the reputation of IP addresses. An interesting exercise would be to calculate the number of man-hours put into maintaining the reputation of each IP address.