7 ms·

The value in SAAS email services like MailChimp is not really in the sending infrastructure. It's in the dark arts of keeping your IP's from spam blacklists and

The value in SAAS email services like MailChimp is not really in the sending infrastructure. It's in the dark arts of keeping your IP's from spam blacklists and ensuring email delivery rates are sufficient. You'll find that any naive attempt at running your own will be very hard to scale.

ams6110 9y ago
Or you could just not send spam in the first place.
- txsh 9y ago
  You don’t have to send spam to end up on a blacklist.
- cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
  Just sending a completely legit email newsletter with a gmail address can get you blacklisted. It's a sad reality but that's how the email works today.
- Urgo 9y ago
  We have about 700k users who have opted in to our newsletter but we only send one a couple times a year. As a result mailchimp's costs are way too much so we've used Sendy the past couple years. Our emails are definitely not spam as they're announcing new products/features/company related/etc and again, only a couple of times a year... but over time more and more often the newsletters end up in peoples spam folders. We're sending through SES so this really shouldn't be an issue but it does. I'm not sure if Mailtrain will do something that sendy doesn't do to make mail deliver better but it really seems more like mailchimp gives some kickback or deal to gmail/etc or gmail just knows that people using mailchimp are paying a lot so that goes through... Anyway long story short, Mailtrain sounds interesting if it can solve this issue... but it's really not just spam that gets blocked as spam these days, its a major pay to play game and its the email companies that are getting paid, not the people getting the emails.
  - joecot 9y ago
    Mailtrain will help you manage your email campaigns and the marketing list, but isn't going to help with deliverability. If you have SES setup with SPF and DKIM, and you're removing emails from your list when they bounce, Mailtrain isn't going to help your deliverability. Its job is very similar to what Sendy is already doing for you. You could also take a look at Mailgun, which is more expensive than SES but might work better, and Mailtrain has Mailgun integration. In either case, you could look at adding a dedicated IP for your lists, which would help for deliverability, but increase costs: IPs are 24.95 a month on SES, and 59 a month from Mailgun
  - dx034 9y ago
    If you only send emails a few times a year, some subscribers probably forgot that they signed up or are not interested anymore so they report as spam to keep it out of the inbox. That could then send it to spam folders for others as well.
- CodeWriter23 9y ago
  Won’t stop Junkie McSpambutton from using the Junk button as a delete button. And with the virtual monoculture of the Anti-SPAM industry, getting blackballed by one ESP means you’re blackballed on multiple ESPs.
joecot 9y ago
You use Mailtrain to manage your list subscriptions and manage your email blasts. If you want your email to then land in inboxes instead of spam, you can use an emailing service, like MailGun or Amazon SES, to actually send the mail. Instructions for using both are on Mailtrain's wiki. The problem with MailChimp is that it's very simple and easy to use, and once your list actually gets popular the pricing falls off a cliff. At 2,000 subscribers MailChimp is free; at 3,000 it's $50 a month, and it keeps going up. There's no monthly fee to send email through Mailgun, and the only thing they charge for is number of emails: you can send 10,000 a month for free, and it's $5 per 10,000 after that. You can also manage mailing lists directly through mailgun, but it doesn't have as polished an interface (and you need to send the actual mailings yourself through the API). So if you want a polished interface, use MailTrain to manage your lists and Mailgun to send the emails. Amazon SES is even cheaper, and also hooks into Mailtrain. "$0 for the first 62,000 emails sent per month, and $0.10 per 1,000 emails sent thereafter." MailChimp offers better deliverability than Mailgun and SES, but at a pretty steep cost. If you're a professional company with income, pay the $50+ a month for Mailchimp. If you're doing a list for a sidegig or a hobby, use Mailtrain.
- eli 9y ago
  That difference in price only gets more pronounced as you scale up. The cost isn't just in dollars, but in time and hassle. MailChimp will halt your send and wait for a human to review it and your list practices if you hit various undisclosed triggers. Makes sense, but if your emails are time critical and have real revenue riding on them, it's not really workable.
  - wefarrell 9y ago
    The alternative is to use a service that doesn't review suspicious activity, which is going to have significantly worse delivery rates.
    - eli 9y ago
      I think a much more common alternative is to work with a provider who specializes in enterprise customers instead of small retail customers. I'm happy to sign a long term contract and make guarantees about my list acquisition practices, but I lose money and my readers' trust if I click the Send button and it doesn't send.
eli 9y ago
Supposedly SES is much better at deliverability than it used to be and you can pay an extra fee for a dedicated IP which somewhat isolates you from other users.
mdasen 9y ago
I agree that MailChimp or other hosted email platforms offer value add over Mailtrain. They're SaaS, they work on deliverability, etc. However, Mailtrain is nice as an alternative. Even if you don't want to use it, its existence means that SaaS must compete with it. If you become large, you could get a dedicated IP address from Amazon SES ($25/mo) or others and own your deliverability. Mailtrain, WordPress, and others might not be what you're looking for. However, it's great that they exist. They provide competition for SaaS which pushes SaaS to be better and a release valve should the pricing of a SaaS solution get too out of hand.
joering2 9y ago
> You'll find that any naive attempt at running your own will be very hard to scale. LOL. That's what they want you to think, but no big ESP such as gmail or yahoo have any set of special rules for Mailchimp or other big guys, because that would open them for lawsuits based on an unfair treatment. My last company was chained to Sendgrid, until someone with yahoo email account clicked on the "spam" button 147 times... on the same email message! That was in 2015. A glitch in Sendgrid system counted each click as unique, and our spam rate got to be 27%. We got kicked out from Sendgrid faster than we could dispute it, and then they stopped answering our phonecalls. We moved to Mandrill but that wasn't better because they were super-sensitive. We then built our own Digital Ocean $5 box and gradually start sending emails that were NOT spam. First 50 per hour, next day 100, next week 1000, you get my drift. Today we email about 2,000,000 opt-in emails per day from the same DO $5 512MB box, built on Centos 6 and postfix. Delivery rate similar like we used to see with Sendgrid/Mandrill, at around 86% with click-tru 55% but that doesn't matter these days. Bottom line: if you don't send spam then why would you be punished for legitimate emails?? Big ESP will take few weeks (a month?) to learn where to deliver your email and we had nothing but good experience. Of course I don't have to mention basic DKIM/Spif/DMARC other basic stuff alignment. Also bounce mailbox needs to be monitored. If you need any further info/help, shoot me a message I be happy to help.
- wordpressdev 9y ago
  Hi, I am planning to move away from existing provider due to the cost factor and planning to set up own mail delivery system. I reviewed Sendy but haven't made the transition yet. I am looking to host about 30K subscribers who'll receive emails every 10-15 times a month. Your thoughts?
  - tittietime 9y ago
    I'm using Sendy to send ~15k emails every day. It works fine with a few hiccups. It stops sending after every few hundred and I have to keep hitting the 'send' button again. I've scripted this so it automatically happens. I'll admit I'm due for an upgrade which may have fixed that bug, but I made some minor modifications to the Sendy code which I just don't want to try to port to an upgrade. Know that Sendy does a phone home which is just to check if you actually purchased the code. There is also a obfuscated file that I've unwound if you were curious: https://gist.github.com/tittietime/0284ce3b6ef5e4fd35d3aa105b61e360 https://gist.github.com/tittietime/0284ce3b6ef5e4fd35d3aa105...
legohead 9y ago
We use Mailtrain behind SendGrid. SendGrid charges out the ass for keeping contacts and doing newsletters, so we use Mailtrain to manage lists and campaigns. Mailtrain tracks clicks and stuff too, which is all we really need. We've never gotten a positive ROI from emails, but use them as a way to finish off a marketing budget. My only gripe about Mailtrain is its development stack. There was a bug and I wanted to fix it, but it has one of those "magical" type environments where things magically link up and work, which means a ton of investment on my part to figure out what's going on.

ams6110 9y ago

Or you could just not send spam in the first place.

txsh 9y ago
You don’t have to send spam to end up on a blacklist.
cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
Just sending a completely legit email newsletter with a gmail address can get you blacklisted. It's a sad reality but that's how the email works today.
Urgo 9y ago
We have about 700k users who have opted in to our newsletter but we only send one a couple times a year. As a result mailchimp's costs are way too much so we've used Sendy the past couple years. Our emails are definitely not spam as they're announcing new products/features/company related/etc and again, only a couple of times a year... but over time more and more often the newsletters end up in peoples spam folders. We're sending through SES so this really shouldn't be an issue but it does. I'm not sure if Mailtrain will do something that sendy doesn't do to make mail deliver better but it really seems more like mailchimp gives some kickback or deal to gmail/etc or gmail just knows that people using mailchimp are paying a lot so that goes through... Anyway long story short, Mailtrain sounds interesting if it can solve this issue... but it's really not just spam that gets blocked as spam these days, its a major pay to play game and its the email companies that are getting paid, not the people getting the emails.
- joecot 9y ago
  Mailtrain will help you manage your email campaigns and the marketing list, but isn't going to help with deliverability. If you have SES setup with SPF and DKIM, and you're removing emails from your list when they bounce, Mailtrain isn't going to help your deliverability. Its job is very similar to what Sendy is already doing for you. You could also take a look at Mailgun, which is more expensive than SES but might work better, and Mailtrain has Mailgun integration. In either case, you could look at adding a dedicated IP for your lists, which would help for deliverability, but increase costs: IPs are 24.95 a month on SES, and 59 a month from Mailgun
- dx034 9y ago
  If you only send emails a few times a year, some subscribers probably forgot that they signed up or are not interested anymore so they report as spam to keep it out of the inbox. That could then send it to spam folders for others as well.
CodeWriter23 9y ago
Won’t stop Junkie McSpambutton from using the Junk button as a delete button. And with the virtual monoculture of the Anti-SPAM industry, getting blackballed by one ESP means you’re blackballed on multiple ESPs.

joecot 9y ago

You use Mailtrain to manage your list subscriptions and manage your email blasts. If you want your email to then land in inboxes instead of spam, you can use an emailing service, like MailGun or Amazon SES, to actually send the mail. Instructions for using both are on Mailtrain's wiki. The problem with MailChimp is that it's very simple and easy to use, and once your list actually gets popular the pricing falls off a cliff. At 2,000 subscribers MailChimp is free; at 3,000 it's $50 a month, and it keeps going up. There's no monthly fee to send email through Mailgun, and the only thing they charge for is number of emails: you can send 10,000 a month for free, and it's $5 per 10,000 after that. You can also manage mailing lists directly through mailgun, but it doesn't have as polished an interface (and you need to send the actual mailings yourself through the API). So if you want a polished interface, use MailTrain to manage your lists and Mailgun to send the emails. Amazon SES is even cheaper, and also hooks into Mailtrain. "$0 for the first 62,000 emails sent per month, and $0.10 per 1,000 emails sent thereafter." MailChimp offers better deliverability than Mailgun and SES, but at a pretty steep cost. If you're a professional company with income, pay the $50+ a month for Mailchimp. If you're doing a list for a sidegig or a hobby, use Mailtrain.

eli 9y ago
That difference in price only gets more pronounced as you scale up. The cost isn't just in dollars, but in time and hassle. MailChimp will halt your send and wait for a human to review it and your list practices if you hit various undisclosed triggers. Makes sense, but if your emails are time critical and have real revenue riding on them, it's not really workable.
- wefarrell 9y ago
  The alternative is to use a service that doesn't review suspicious activity, which is going to have significantly worse delivery rates.
  - eli 9y ago
    I think a much more common alternative is to work with a provider who specializes in enterprise customers instead of small retail customers. I'm happy to sign a long term contract and make guarantees about my list acquisition practices, but I lose money and my readers' trust if I click the Send button and it doesn't send.

eli 9y ago

Supposedly SES is much better at deliverability than it used to be and you can pay an extra fee for a dedicated IP which somewhat isolates you from other users.

mdasen 9y ago

I agree that MailChimp or other hosted email platforms offer value add over Mailtrain. They're SaaS, they work on deliverability, etc. However, Mailtrain is nice as an alternative. Even if you don't want to use it, its existence means that SaaS must compete with it. If you become large, you could get a dedicated IP address from Amazon SES ($25/mo) or others and own your deliverability. Mailtrain, WordPress, and others might not be what you're looking for. However, it's great that they exist. They provide competition for SaaS which pushes SaaS to be better and a release valve should the pricing of a SaaS solution get too out of hand.

joering2 9y ago

> You'll find that any naive attempt at running your own will be very hard to scale. LOL. That's what they want you to think, but no big ESP such as gmail or yahoo have any set of special rules for Mailchimp or other big guys, because that would open them for lawsuits based on an unfair treatment. My last company was chained to Sendgrid, until someone with yahoo email account clicked on the "spam" button 147 times... on the same email message! That was in 2015. A glitch in Sendgrid system counted each click as unique, and our spam rate got to be 27%. We got kicked out from Sendgrid faster than we could dispute it, and then they stopped answering our phonecalls. We moved to Mandrill but that wasn't better because they were super-sensitive. We then built our own Digital Ocean $5 box and gradually start sending emails that were NOT spam. First 50 per hour, next day 100, next week 1000, you get my drift. Today we email about 2,000,000 opt-in emails per day from the same DO $5 512MB box, built on Centos 6 and postfix. Delivery rate similar like we used to see with Sendgrid/Mandrill, at around 86% with click-tru 55% but that doesn't matter these days. Bottom line: if you don't send spam then why would you be punished for legitimate emails?? Big ESP will take few weeks (a month?) to learn where to deliver your email and we had nothing but good experience. Of course I don't have to mention basic DKIM/Spif/DMARC other basic stuff alignment. Also bounce mailbox needs to be monitored. If you need any further info/help, shoot me a message I be happy to help.

wordpressdev 9y ago
Hi, I am planning to move away from existing provider due to the cost factor and planning to set up own mail delivery system. I reviewed Sendy but haven't made the transition yet. I am looking to host about 30K subscribers who'll receive emails every 10-15 times a month. Your thoughts?
- tittietime 9y ago
  I'm using Sendy to send ~15k emails every day. It works fine with a few hiccups. It stops sending after every few hundred and I have to keep hitting the 'send' button again. I've scripted this so it automatically happens. I'll admit I'm due for an upgrade which may have fixed that bug, but I made some minor modifications to the Sendy code which I just don't want to try to port to an upgrade. Know that Sendy does a phone home which is just to check if you actually purchased the code. There is also a obfuscated file that I've unwound if you were curious: https://gist.github.com/tittietime/0284ce3b6ef5e4fd35d3aa105b61e360 https://gist.github.com/tittietime/0284ce3b6ef5e4fd35d3aa105...

legohead 9y ago

We use Mailtrain behind SendGrid. SendGrid charges out the ass for keeping contacts and doing newsletters, so we use Mailtrain to manage lists and campaigns. Mailtrain tracks clicks and stuff too, which is all we really need. We've never gotten a positive ROI from emails, but use them as a way to finish off a marketing budget. My only gripe about Mailtrain is its development stack. There was a bug and I wanted to fix it, but it has one of those "magical" type environments where things magically link up and work, which means a ton of investment on my part to figure out what's going on.