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As long as you're diligent, it's not that difficult to deliver e-mail successfully. It really depends on what kind of e-mail you're sending and how frequently y

by konsl 18y ago

As long as you're diligent, it's not that difficult to deliver e-mail successfully. It really depends on what kind of e-mail you're sending and how frequently you send it. That being said, monitoring bounces, watching junk mail reporting programs, etc can quickly become a full-time job. The answer isn't do to one or the other -- it depends on the situation.

mattmaroon 18y ago
It can be done, I just can't see doing it yourself being worth it until you have a large number of people to whom you are frequently mailing. Someone else said "it's really not worth it to go third-party unless you're sending heavy HTML newsletter type e-mails to hundreds of thousands or millions of people. " My thought is the exact opposite. When you're small, it's not worth committing the resources to doing all you need to do yourself. Third party services cost $10 or $20 a month and save you hours of work, and increase delivery rates greatly. (At least they did for us and the few other startups I've talked to about this.) When you're large, the cost of third party services exceeds the cost of doing it yourself, and you can get better quality in house. If you are doing it yourself, I hear good things about Return Path, but have no first hand experience.
- omakase 18y ago
  I think when you're small it really depends on your application. If email isn't an important part and you aren't sending high volume, then I definitely agree it can be a huge time-sink and very tough to figure out. But if you really want control of your email it's not that difficult to do if you follow best practices. WRT Return Path - I'm pretty sure Twitter turned to them when they had trouble delivering mail. Part of what they do is email whitelisting, which I fundamentally disagree with. But if you read the paper on how they helped twitter out with best practices there is actually a lot of good stuff in there (things that you can do on your own if it's important or you're at that scale).

by konsl 18y ago

mattmaroon 18y ago

It can be done, I just can't see doing it yourself being worth it until you have a large number of people to whom you are frequently mailing. Someone else said "it's really not worth it to go third-party unless you're sending heavy HTML newsletter type e-mails to hundreds of thousands or millions of people. " My thought is the exact opposite. When you're small, it's not worth committing the resources to doing all you need to do yourself. Third party services cost $10 or $20 a month and save you hours of work, and increase delivery rates greatly. (At least they did for us and the few other startups I've talked to about this.) When you're large, the cost of third party services exceeds the cost of doing it yourself, and you can get better quality in house. If you are doing it yourself, I hear good things about Return Path, but have no first hand experience.

omakase 18y ago
I think when you're small it really depends on your application. If email isn't an important part and you aren't sending high volume, then I definitely agree it can be a huge time-sink and very tough to figure out. But if you really want control of your email it's not that difficult to do if you follow best practices. WRT Return Path - I'm pretty sure Twitter turned to them when they had trouble delivering mail. Part of what they do is email whitelisting, which I fundamentally disagree with. But if you read the paper on how they helped twitter out with best practices there is actually a lot of good stuff in there (things that you can do on your own if it's important or you're at that scale).