5 ms·

Not so sure about hat. Deliverability is still a huge issue when selfhosting your own e-mail setup.

southerntofu 5y ago
From what i saw/experienced deliverability is usually only an issue when spamming people against their will. Sure, Microsoft/Google will block you at first but after a few weeks/months of going through administrative hoops you'll be allowlisted and your mails will deliver just fine. Sounds like paying an office worker a few weeks to keep in touch with Microsoft/Google support plus hardware + employing sysadmins would be considerably cheaper than 200m/year. That is, of course, unless you're spamming your users with undesired messages.
- luckylion 5y ago
  I'm not so sure. Running transactional-message-only (i.e. double opt-in, password resets) for a small site I own with DKIM and SPF on its own IP for years ... GMail will still block a large percentage of it. Using SES with the exact same emails, Gmail will block significantly less. The large providers are whitelisted and unless you're as large, you're not going to get that privilege. Granted, for $200m you should be large enough to bribe a few Google people to get into the club, but for anything where it reasonably might be profitable to run it yourself and employ a sysadmin, you won't be able to afford that.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    > GMail will still block a large percentage of it. Yeah Gmail is actively filtering smaller providers. But from what i heard/read it appears after personally contacting them several times they will end up allowlisting you (like Microsoft).
    - alfiedotwtf 5y ago
      Not sure about the rest of you, but I can't wait for email to die. It's insecure, spammable, and Gmail has an almost-monopoly in terms of delivery.
      - southerntofu 5y ago
        Not sure about the rest of you, but i'm exactly in the opposite team. email is as close to "universal messaging" as we'll ever get. It's the best example of interop we've seen so far and i'm afraid no new protocol could ever catch up with the almost 4 decades of email legacy. Personally i don't care that Google won't let me talk to people. I treat google's email server like i treat a bourgeois café in a fancy district: there may be friendly people to have a chat with in there, but they definitely don't want me around and i have better places to be and better people to meet. Only a revolution can change this balance, and in the meantime i won't loose my energy trying to get into their club, but rather develop our decentralized clubs.
        upofadown 5y ago
        It's silly to claim that almost everyone has problems with Gmail deliverability. The fact is that Gmail has problems with receiveability. Gmail is the email provider for people who don't care if they get all their email.
        alfiedotwtf 5y ago
        This. Gmail deliverability blows away the parent's "interop" comment.
        southerntofu 5y ago
        So true. If only we had more techcoops providing free-price (or 10€/y) services for the masses with a UX experience close to (or better than) google services...
    - EGreg 5y ago
      And how exactly do you personally contact google multiple times as someone running a domain on the internet? :-D
      - pstuart 5y ago
        Get your trauma on the front page of HN?
        EGreg 5y ago
        This guy was acting like it’s no big deal, anyone can do it
      - toast0 5y ago
        If you're sending $200M worth of email, you just pop a warning when people enter a gmail address. "We have received many reports from GMAil users that our messages were not delivered or delayed. Please provide an alternate address." Somebody who knows somebody will see that and poke their contact for you.
      - southerntofu 5y ago
        Unfortunately these evil tech businesses have very little official avenues to reach them. Usually it's either through public outcry, or through the official form you see in error logs, which requires creating a google account if i remember well. Arguably, if you're operating a business and have a client using Gmail, you could have you and your client contact Google support to ask allowlisting, then sue Google for anti-competitive (monopolist) behavior if they don't comply. I don't know of a case like this, but it should be an easy win and would set an interesting precedent. I'm personally not into legal stuff, but if some startup people around here with a few lawyers would try this approach... :)
- theshadowknows 5y ago
  We send multiple billions of emails a year, and text messages, and push messages, and outbound ivr messages, and two way chat messages, and print messages, and in some cases fax messages lol. Our outbound volume is extreme and luckily only a few of our communication streams have trouble with deliverability. But it does take a few different teams to manage it all.

From what i saw/experienced deliverability is usually only an issue when spamming people against their will. Sure, Microsoft/Google will block you at first but after a few weeks/months of going through administrative hoops you'll be allowlisted and your mails will deliver just fine. Sounds like paying an office worker a few weeks to keep in touch with Microsoft/Google support plus hardware + employing sysadmins would be considerably cheaper than 200m/year. That is, of course, unless you're spamming your users with undesired messages.

luckylion 5y ago
I'm not so sure. Running transactional-message-only (i.e. double opt-in, password resets) for a small site I own with DKIM and SPF on its own IP for years ... GMail will still block a large percentage of it. Using SES with the exact same emails, Gmail will block significantly less. The large providers are whitelisted and unless you're as large, you're not going to get that privilege. Granted, for $200m you should be large enough to bribe a few Google people to get into the club, but for anything where it reasonably might be profitable to run it yourself and employ a sysadmin, you won't be able to afford that.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  > GMail will still block a large percentage of it. Yeah Gmail is actively filtering smaller providers. But from what i heard/read it appears after personally contacting them several times they will end up allowlisting you (like Microsoft).
  - alfiedotwtf 5y ago
    Not sure about the rest of you, but I can't wait for email to die. It's insecure, spammable, and Gmail has an almost-monopoly in terms of delivery.
    - southerntofu 5y ago
      Not sure about the rest of you, but i'm exactly in the opposite team. email is as close to "universal messaging" as we'll ever get. It's the best example of interop we've seen so far and i'm afraid no new protocol could ever catch up with the almost 4 decades of email legacy. Personally i don't care that Google won't let me talk to people. I treat google's email server like i treat a bourgeois café in a fancy district: there may be friendly people to have a chat with in there, but they definitely don't want me around and i have better places to be and better people to meet. Only a revolution can change this balance, and in the meantime i won't loose my energy trying to get into their club, but rather develop our decentralized clubs.
      - upofadown 5y ago
        It's silly to claim that almost everyone has problems with Gmail deliverability. The fact is that Gmail has problems with receiveability. Gmail is the email provider for people who don't care if they get all their email.
        alfiedotwtf 5y ago
        This. Gmail deliverability blows away the parent's "interop" comment.
        southerntofu 5y ago
        So true. If only we had more techcoops providing free-price (or 10€/y) services for the masses with a UX experience close to (or better than) google services...
  - EGreg 5y ago
    And how exactly do you personally contact google multiple times as someone running a domain on the internet? :-D
    - pstuart 5y ago
      Get your trauma on the front page of HN?
      - EGreg 5y ago
        This guy was acting like it’s no big deal, anyone can do it
    - toast0 5y ago
      If you're sending $200M worth of email, you just pop a warning when people enter a gmail address. "We have received many reports from GMAil users that our messages were not delivered or delayed. Please provide an alternate address." Somebody who knows somebody will see that and poke their contact for you.
    - southerntofu 5y ago
      Unfortunately these evil tech businesses have very little official avenues to reach them. Usually it's either through public outcry, or through the official form you see in error logs, which requires creating a google account if i remember well. Arguably, if you're operating a business and have a client using Gmail, you could have you and your client contact Google support to ask allowlisting, then sue Google for anti-competitive (monopolist) behavior if they don't comply. I don't know of a case like this, but it should be an easy win and would set an interesting precedent. I'm personally not into legal stuff, but if some startup people around here with a few lawyers would try this approach... :)
theshadowknows 5y ago
We send multiple billions of emails a year, and text messages, and push messages, and outbound ivr messages, and two way chat messages, and print messages, and in some cases fax messages lol. Our outbound volume is extreme and luckily only a few of our communication streams have trouble with deliverability. But it does take a few different teams to manage it all.