4 ms·

Exactly, if you're at the point where you're sending 1 million emails a month you're either spamming people or you don't care about the difference between $100

by jm20 8y ago

Exactly, if you're at the point where you're sending 1 million emails a month you're either spamming people or you don't care about the difference between $100 and $900.

jazoom 8y ago
Or you run a popular free service or service that makes so little money this is important. Consider F5bot. It wouldn't take too many subscribers getting several emails per day to hit 1000000 per month.
- overcast 8y ago
  That's why you don't run a free service with actual value that people would pay for. F5Bot is just being taken advantage of in my opinion. They recently got front page of HN again, and their patreon page went from $41 a month to a whopping $50.
  - jazoom 8y ago
    I can come up with examples all day of things people could create where they care about $900 leaving their pocket each month. Dismissing all these projects wholesale (as the parent comment did) is not helpful.
    - manquer 8y ago
      If you are on shoe string , sending your own email is a better solution. It will take few weeks to establish your rep, as along you process the abuse reports , it is not a problem for transactional email. The original question was for marketing email, if you are sending a million marketing emails a month and not making enough money then the conclusion that you are sending spam is not unreasonable
      - jazoom 8y ago
        > If you are on shoe string , sending your own email is a better solution. Or just use something like Elastic Email or SES. > The original question was for marketing email, if you are sending a million marketing emails a month and not making enough money then the conclusion that you are sending spam is not unreasonable That's fair enough.
Twilicorn 8y ago
I have a counterexample for you. Start an Internet forum as a side project that lets users subscribe to threads for email notifications. Grow it to xx,xxx users making x,xxx posts per day. Before you know it, you're sending 20k-50k notification emails every day, and over a million emails a month, without making any money or while barely staying afloat with $100-400/month in ad and donations revenue. Almost none of the SaaS or IaaS solutions HN loves to praise are within this use case's price range but scrappy not-for-profit communities like this deserve to exist, too. You're basically limited to leasing a bare-metal server or two and making it do almost everything you need. The difference between $100/mo and $900/mo is the difference between getting to stay online or shutting the forum down. Even the difference between $10/month and $100/month might be enough to close shop over. Personally, in this scenario, I've found setting up my own mail server with a tool like Postal or Cuttlefish to be worth every minute and delivery rates to even be better (due to getting to manage my own IP address's reputation vs sharing a mail-sending IP with anyone else).
- ultrasaurus 8y ago
  SendGrid (and I assume the other similar services) charges a premium to pay for the work that your emails don't get blacklisted anywhere enroute -- that's worth 1/20th of a penny to most business emails (since it increases open rates), but it may not be worth it for every use case.
  - resters 8y ago
    Isn't it the case these days that if you aren't sending spam and have a stable sending IP that the system will eventually learn that you are not a spammer and your emails will get delivered? It can take months for an IP to earn a reputation as a non-spammer, but once it's earned I find it hard to believe that Sendgrid offers any additional ability to get emails delivered outside of the natural earning of reputation.
    - jsjohnst 8y ago
      Don’t respond to spam feedback loops from major mail providers and you’ll quickly get blacklisted no matter how much reputation you built up. This could happen at any point and doesn’t require that many people to mark as spam. It’s worth paying someone if deliverability is important.

by jm20 8y ago

Exactly, if you're at the point where you're sending 1 million emails a month you're either spamming people or you don't care about the difference between $100 and $900.

jazoom 8y ago

Or you run a popular free service or service that makes so little money this is important. Consider F5bot. It wouldn't take too many subscribers getting several emails per day to hit 1000000 per month.

overcast 8y ago
That's why you don't run a free service with actual value that people would pay for. F5Bot is just being taken advantage of in my opinion. They recently got front page of HN again, and their patreon page went from $41 a month to a whopping $50.
- jazoom 8y ago
  I can come up with examples all day of things people could create where they care about $900 leaving their pocket each month. Dismissing all these projects wholesale (as the parent comment did) is not helpful.
  - manquer 8y ago
    If you are on shoe string , sending your own email is a better solution. It will take few weeks to establish your rep, as along you process the abuse reports , it is not a problem for transactional email. The original question was for marketing email, if you are sending a million marketing emails a month and not making enough money then the conclusion that you are sending spam is not unreasonable
    - jazoom 8y ago
      > If you are on shoe string , sending your own email is a better solution. Or just use something like Elastic Email or SES. > The original question was for marketing email, if you are sending a million marketing emails a month and not making enough money then the conclusion that you are sending spam is not unreasonable That's fair enough.

Twilicorn 8y ago

I have a counterexample for you. Start an Internet forum as a side project that lets users subscribe to threads for email notifications. Grow it to xx,xxx users making x,xxx posts per day. Before you know it, you're sending 20k-50k notification emails every day, and over a million emails a month, without making any money or while barely staying afloat with $100-400/month in ad and donations revenue. Almost none of the SaaS or IaaS solutions HN loves to praise are within this use case's price range but scrappy not-for-profit communities like this deserve to exist, too. You're basically limited to leasing a bare-metal server or two and making it do almost everything you need. The difference between $100/mo and $900/mo is the difference between getting to stay online or shutting the forum down. Even the difference between $10/month and $100/month might be enough to close shop over. Personally, in this scenario, I've found setting up my own mail server with a tool like Postal or Cuttlefish to be worth every minute and delivery rates to even be better (due to getting to manage my own IP address's reputation vs sharing a mail-sending IP with anyone else).

ultrasaurus 8y ago
SendGrid (and I assume the other similar services) charges a premium to pay for the work that your emails don't get blacklisted anywhere enroute -- that's worth 1/20th of a penny to most business emails (since it increases open rates), but it may not be worth it for every use case.
- resters 8y ago
  Isn't it the case these days that if you aren't sending spam and have a stable sending IP that the system will eventually learn that you are not a spammer and your emails will get delivered? It can take months for an IP to earn a reputation as a non-spammer, but once it's earned I find it hard to believe that Sendgrid offers any additional ability to get emails delivered outside of the natural earning of reputation.
  - jsjohnst 8y ago
    Don’t respond to spam feedback loops from major mail providers and you’ll quickly get blacklisted no matter how much reputation you built up. This could happen at any point and doesn’t require that many people to mark as spam. It’s worth paying someone if deliverability is important.