10 ms·

Fair warning, just this week Mailgun locked my account due to random "spam" detection. We only send unique hand created emails and have only sent to about 200 u

by jadbox 7y ago

Fair warning, just this week Mailgun locked my account due to random "spam" detection. We only send unique hand created emails and have only sent to about 200 unique users over the last few months. Because our account is locked, our customers cannot contact us at all and we can't reach out to them. It's been 3 days and our support messages have gone unanswered. Hopefully this gets cleared up real soon. I kind of feel like the process might be pushing people to upgrade to premium phone support to regain access to their business, but maybe I'm being pessimistic.

meritt 7y ago
> our customers cannot contact us at all I thought mailgun was for delivering emails? How/why are they your MX?
- nullspace 7y ago
  They are actually one of the few services that u can use for programmatically receiving emails. When it works, it just works - but unfortunately the spam thing bit us as well. Fortunately we were able to get it resolved quickly
  - thrownblown 7y ago
    I use MG for automated email intake too, but I also use sparkpost as a backup email intake.
    - adamfeldman 7y ago
      How do you switch from the primary to the backup?
      - thrownblown 7y ago
        for our purpose i have two distinct email domains and fwd to both addresses and process which ever hits my servers first.
  - sethammons 7y ago
    We provide that at Twilio SendGrid too: Parse Webhook
    - fludlight 7y ago
      Having both phones and email at one supplier sounds risky. If you lock my account it takes out the two major ways a customer can reach us. No thanks.
- AlexMuir 7y ago
  If I remember right, they recommend using a sub domain and being an Mx.
- jadbox 7y ago
  They provide MX forwarding for delivery, but we use them because it saves us from having to buy a per user email account with gsuite or outlook. It's a little bit of a hassle/hack, but it works well enough in practice. I use a free gmail account that receives forwarded emails from Mailgun, and I can respond via mailgun smtp within gmail.
mattwad 7y ago
This happened to us a couple weeks back. One day I woke up and our domain had been blocked from sending and receiving. We upgraded our account temporarily to get phone chat support, and what happened was they added some filters which unintentionally got triggered by incoming spam. It was completely their fault, and they fixed it in a few minutes, but they couldn't give me much more detail. Not enough for us to leave Mailgun -- everything else has been great -- but it was very concerning, and I am sure many other accounts were affected.
anothaone 7y ago
Similar thing happened to me as well. I added another domain for a completely different project and their spam detection locked my account completely, including my main project I've been using for a long time before without any issues. Got account unlocked after six hours of downtime though, but I changed email provider since then.
- jadbox 7y ago
  What did you change to?
  - anothaone 7y ago
    Postmark. Very happy with their service so far.
    - jamesponddotco 7y ago
      Another vote for Postmark here. They are more expensive, but worth every penny. I do wish they would let you choose the region where the server is located though, like Mailgun does.
    - inopinatus 7y ago
      I'll chime in for Postmark as well. As a B2B SaaS, our opportunity cost for support (and potential for lost goodwill) due to failed notifications is high, and switching to Postmark noticeably moved the needle. Time is our most valuable and scarce resource, and peer recommendation is our primary marketing device, so the price increment for switching to Postmark is easily justified. Their deliverability and support are stellar compared to Sendgrid, Mailgun, and SES. Two thumbs up See also: Fastmail over G suite for your mailboxes and calendaring.
      - jadbox 7y ago
        In what way does your B2B use Postmark? And do you use Fastmail for your company mailboxes? If so, why not just use Postmark to forward emails?
hayksaakian 7y ago
Just a word or advice: if you're only sending to 200 people you might not need mailgun. You can use gsuite programmatically for easy inbox management with the Gmail API.
- lucasmullens 7y ago
  How is paying for G Suite and using their API instead any different?
  - hayksaakian 7y ago
    Mainly from a user experience and customer service perspective: You can hire a non technical person to manage your inbox without having to code as much to connect with your systems. If you have problems with G suite, you are a paying customer and you get support from Google. There's a phone number you can call and get your problems solved.
jrodom 7y ago
Can you email your ticket number to josh@mailgun.com and I'll take a look? This definitely isn't typical and I'll get this resolved immediately for you.
- jadbox 7y ago
  Thanks Josh. Our account has been unfrozen, and I've been given some assurance that it'll not happen again for us. Cheers.
rajeemcariazo 7y ago
I had a worse experience with mailgun that almost made me lose my job. Our domain was blacklisted for sending spam. I think mailgun's server was hacked at that time because our Api Key was kept securely using the best practices. I dont want to use Sendgrid because of bloated and slow UI but I had no choice.
- jrodom 7y ago
  If this is a recent occurrence, I'd be happy to have our application security team take a look. To be clear, there hasn't been any kind of breach, but our customers are often targeted in phishing schemes that results in the disclosure of account credentials. We're continually adapting our defenses, but this is responsible for the majority of credential leaks.
  - duskwuff 7y ago
    There's one really easy step you could take that would make a huge dent in those phishing schemes: Detect and block phishing emails that are forwarded through your service. Right now, I get several messages forwarded per day from "Sam at Mailgun" (actually a variety of external senders) trying to get me to log in to review various (nonexistent) problems with my account.
gldalmaso 7y ago
We have had two separate instances of Mailgun blocking our account without reaching out, forcing us to upgrade the account to have access to chat support in order to resolve the issue in a reasonable time. They seem to only respond tickets once a day at best and make their best effort to wiggle out of any effort to help you get back to sending in any haste. The first time was a mistake on their part when they switched plan tiers and our payment was not processed correctly, they fixed it entirely on their end and did not admit to the problem in the slightest. After this event we made sure to have an intermediate queue on our end in order not to have emails sent into oblivion. The second time one of our users mass reported a bunch of old emails at once which triggered something that instantly blocked us. Even if we have very low reporting in general (no marketing emails) a single user was able to effectively kill sending of emails to all other users without any forewarning. After that we forced ourselves out of the platform. When we look for a transactional email sending service, we expect at least an effort on the service to keep the api working while we resolve any issues that arise in a timely manner.
tootahe45 7y ago
IIRC Mailgun is one of those services that let you develop your app to use their api (i.e get some skin in the game, let you do a small fraction of the free-tier emails) then instantly locks your acc until you add a card for ID. The first IP they put me on was also blacklisted by Hotmail, meaning emails don't even get through to the user's spam box.

by jadbox 7y ago

meritt 7y ago

> our customers cannot contact us at all I thought mailgun was for delivering emails? How/why are they your MX?

nullspace 7y ago
They are actually one of the few services that u can use for programmatically receiving emails. When it works, it just works - but unfortunately the spam thing bit us as well. Fortunately we were able to get it resolved quickly
- thrownblown 7y ago
  I use MG for automated email intake too, but I also use sparkpost as a backup email intake.
  - adamfeldman 7y ago
    How do you switch from the primary to the backup?
    - thrownblown 7y ago
      for our purpose i have two distinct email domains and fwd to both addresses and process which ever hits my servers first.
- sethammons 7y ago
  We provide that at Twilio SendGrid too: Parse Webhook
  - fludlight 7y ago
    Having both phones and email at one supplier sounds risky. If you lock my account it takes out the two major ways a customer can reach us. No thanks.
AlexMuir 7y ago
If I remember right, they recommend using a sub domain and being an Mx.
jadbox 7y ago
They provide MX forwarding for delivery, but we use them because it saves us from having to buy a per user email account with gsuite or outlook. It's a little bit of a hassle/hack, but it works well enough in practice. I use a free gmail account that receives forwarded emails from Mailgun, and I can respond via mailgun smtp within gmail.

mattwad 7y ago

This happened to us a couple weeks back. One day I woke up and our domain had been blocked from sending and receiving. We upgraded our account temporarily to get phone chat support, and what happened was they added some filters which unintentionally got triggered by incoming spam. It was completely their fault, and they fixed it in a few minutes, but they couldn't give me much more detail. Not enough for us to leave Mailgun -- everything else has been great -- but it was very concerning, and I am sure many other accounts were affected.

anothaone 7y ago

Similar thing happened to me as well. I added another domain for a completely different project and their spam detection locked my account completely, including my main project I've been using for a long time before without any issues. Got account unlocked after six hours of downtime though, but I changed email provider since then.

jadbox 7y ago
What did you change to?
- anothaone 7y ago
  Postmark. Very happy with their service so far.
  - jamesponddotco 7y ago
    Another vote for Postmark here. They are more expensive, but worth every penny. I do wish they would let you choose the region where the server is located though, like Mailgun does.
  - inopinatus 7y ago
    I'll chime in for Postmark as well. As a B2B SaaS, our opportunity cost for support (and potential for lost goodwill) due to failed notifications is high, and switching to Postmark noticeably moved the needle. Time is our most valuable and scarce resource, and peer recommendation is our primary marketing device, so the price increment for switching to Postmark is easily justified. Their deliverability and support are stellar compared to Sendgrid, Mailgun, and SES. Two thumbs up See also: Fastmail over G suite for your mailboxes and calendaring.
    - jadbox 7y ago
      In what way does your B2B use Postmark? And do you use Fastmail for your company mailboxes? If so, why not just use Postmark to forward emails?

hayksaakian 7y ago

Just a word or advice: if you're only sending to 200 people you might not need mailgun. You can use gsuite programmatically for easy inbox management with the Gmail API.

lucasmullens 7y ago
How is paying for G Suite and using their API instead any different?
- hayksaakian 7y ago
  Mainly from a user experience and customer service perspective: You can hire a non technical person to manage your inbox without having to code as much to connect with your systems. If you have problems with G suite, you are a paying customer and you get support from Google. There's a phone number you can call and get your problems solved.

jrodom 7y ago

Can you email your ticket number to josh@mailgun.com and I'll take a look? This definitely isn't typical and I'll get this resolved immediately for you.

jadbox 7y ago
Thanks Josh. Our account has been unfrozen, and I've been given some assurance that it'll not happen again for us. Cheers.

rajeemcariazo 7y ago

I had a worse experience with mailgun that almost made me lose my job. Our domain was blacklisted for sending spam. I think mailgun's server was hacked at that time because our Api Key was kept securely using the best practices. I dont want to use Sendgrid because of bloated and slow UI but I had no choice.

jrodom 7y ago
If this is a recent occurrence, I'd be happy to have our application security team take a look. To be clear, there hasn't been any kind of breach, but our customers are often targeted in phishing schemes that results in the disclosure of account credentials. We're continually adapting our defenses, but this is responsible for the majority of credential leaks.
- duskwuff 7y ago
  There's one really easy step you could take that would make a huge dent in those phishing schemes: Detect and block phishing emails that are forwarded through your service. Right now, I get several messages forwarded per day from "Sam at Mailgun" (actually a variety of external senders) trying to get me to log in to review various (nonexistent) problems with my account.

gldalmaso 7y ago

We have had two separate instances of Mailgun blocking our account without reaching out, forcing us to upgrade the account to have access to chat support in order to resolve the issue in a reasonable time. They seem to only respond tickets once a day at best and make their best effort to wiggle out of any effort to help you get back to sending in any haste. The first time was a mistake on their part when they switched plan tiers and our payment was not processed correctly, they fixed it entirely on their end and did not admit to the problem in the slightest. After this event we made sure to have an intermediate queue on our end in order not to have emails sent into oblivion. The second time one of our users mass reported a bunch of old emails at once which triggered something that instantly blocked us. Even if we have very low reporting in general (no marketing emails) a single user was able to effectively kill sending of emails to all other users without any forewarning. After that we forced ourselves out of the platform. When we look for a transactional email sending service, we expect at least an effort on the service to keep the api working while we resolve any issues that arise in a timely manner.

tootahe45 7y ago

IIRC Mailgun is one of those services that let you develop your app to use their api (i.e get some skin in the game, let you do a small fraction of the free-tier emails) then instantly locks your acc until you add a card for ID. The first IP they put me on was also blacklisted by Hotmail, meaning emails don't even get through to the user's spam box.