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I hope their customer support continues to be good. I had a hit on HN with a side-project last year [0]. It delivers public domain books in chapters to your em

I hope their customer support continues to be good. I had a hit on HN with a side-project last year [0]. It delivers public domain books in chapters to your email. So I was needing to send over 1,000 emails a day from day one basically. I initially used SendGrid for my project, but SendGrid's free trial had a limit of 100 emails a day. Well, I just needed to upgrade, right? Wrong. Sendgrid had a rule where it was impossible to upgrade from the free trial until the trial period was over. So 90% of my emails were not being delivered because I wasn't in a paid plan and I couldn't upgrade to a paid plan. The worst part is that it wasn't very straightforward to understand I was in that catch 22. It took me about 4 or 5 days of sending their customer support messages and them taking too long to reply and not being very clear in their replies to understand the whole issue. And even proving that my traffic was legit (the HN post was enough evidence that I was not sending spam I think) was not enough for them to allow me to upgrade. So I immediately changed to MailGun. They had similar worries about a new account with significant email traffic, but I sent an email to customer support right after signing up, they replied in an hour or so already allowing me to upgrade. Never had an issue with MailGun and I am very happy with their tech and service. I am now creating a business on top of email delivery and staying with them. Hope this acquisition doesn't change much in that front. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24307752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24307752

baobabKoodaa 5y ago
> I initially used SendGrid for my project, but SendGrid's free trial had a limit of 100 emails a day. Well, I just needed to upgrade, right? Wrong. Sendgrid had a rule where it was impossible to upgrade from the free trial until the trial period was over. So 90% of my emails were not being delivered because I wasn't in a paid plan and I couldn't upgrade to a paid plan. I feel like there's a business lesson in there somewhere, but can't quite put my finger on it.
- statictype 5y ago
  “Never get in the way of someone wanting to give you money”
  - BrianOnHN 5y ago
    SendGrid was still right imo, and I hate shitty customer service. What they could've done better is explain that $$$ for sending @1000 emails/day isn't worth sidestepping procedures which are wholly designed to stop spammers that can have %% impact on bottom line by degrading email IP reputations. Sorry for the winded explanation. I think the gist is there.
    - twodollars 5y ago
      Sendgrid took the time to go back and forth and ended up doing nothing. Why not spend that time vetting the legitimacy of the emails?
      - pipnonsense 5y ago
        That's my biggest issue. One day at the front page of HN of a single page where the only thing you can do is sign up to receive emails is enough to justify 1,000 emails a day IMO. Without knowing anything else, I think the customer support person that took the time to reply me a few times to explain the issue, could have made the decision that likelihood of my service being spam is ~0%. edit: that's exactly what they did at Mailgun btw. The first reply came with a "I'll need to check with other team". Hours later, without any followup from me, came the second reply with "Thanks for providing the information. We have removed the limitations to your account." (copied pasted). Excellent execution in both getting the account and keeping the risk of delivering spam through their service very low. Compare this to Sendgrid, with three or four cryptic replies, and a lost account. Check Amplitude's CEO HN thread about what drove the success of the company to the IPO. Among other things, making it easy/free for small companies to use Amplitude, even though their sole business model was to aim at big corporate accounts. For a few small companies that would turn into big corporate accounts or that were acquired by big corporations that would then adopt Amplitude and become big corporate accounts. I think it would make strategic sense for SendGrid to greenlight my account. It was not a sensible, necessary anti-spam policy IMO, it was just poor execution.
        5y ago
- EleanorKonik 5y ago
  Ghost just won't let users upgrade from a complimentary plan right now and it's _maddening_ because I had to comp a bunch of people who would probably be happy to pay me if it wasn't a hassle, because of a billing error. I wish more businesses knew this lesson :(
samdung 5y ago
Have you tried https://sendwithses.com https://sendwithses.com or https://sendy.co/ https://sendy.co/ ?
- pipnonsense 5y ago
  I changed at the time to Mailgun and I am happy there, so not looking into other options for now. But at the time I look at those and preferred a solution with less upfront configuration required and less things to manage in general. It was a side-project that required a very quick solution. Mailgun was perfect for this.
- kehers 5y ago
  It's not the same as what Mailgun does. Mailgun lets you send emails programmatically. Sendy/Sendwithses lets you send campaigns from an interface (using your SES).

baobabKoodaa 5y ago

> I initially used SendGrid for my project, but SendGrid's free trial had a limit of 100 emails a day. Well, I just needed to upgrade, right? Wrong. Sendgrid had a rule where it was impossible to upgrade from the free trial until the trial period was over. So 90% of my emails were not being delivered because I wasn't in a paid plan and I couldn't upgrade to a paid plan. I feel like there's a business lesson in there somewhere, but can't quite put my finger on it.

statictype 5y ago
“Never get in the way of someone wanting to give you money”
- BrianOnHN 5y ago
  SendGrid was still right imo, and I hate shitty customer service. What they could've done better is explain that $$$ for sending @1000 emails/day isn't worth sidestepping procedures which are wholly designed to stop spammers that can have %% impact on bottom line by degrading email IP reputations. Sorry for the winded explanation. I think the gist is there.
  - twodollars 5y ago
    Sendgrid took the time to go back and forth and ended up doing nothing. Why not spend that time vetting the legitimacy of the emails?
    - pipnonsense 5y ago
      That's my biggest issue. One day at the front page of HN of a single page where the only thing you can do is sign up to receive emails is enough to justify 1,000 emails a day IMO. Without knowing anything else, I think the customer support person that took the time to reply me a few times to explain the issue, could have made the decision that likelihood of my service being spam is ~0%. edit: that's exactly what they did at Mailgun btw. The first reply came with a "I'll need to check with other team". Hours later, without any followup from me, came the second reply with "Thanks for providing the information. We have removed the limitations to your account." (copied pasted). Excellent execution in both getting the account and keeping the risk of delivering spam through their service very low. Compare this to Sendgrid, with three or four cryptic replies, and a lost account. Check Amplitude's CEO HN thread about what drove the success of the company to the IPO. Among other things, making it easy/free for small companies to use Amplitude, even though their sole business model was to aim at big corporate accounts. For a few small companies that would turn into big corporate accounts or that were acquired by big corporations that would then adopt Amplitude and become big corporate accounts. I think it would make strategic sense for SendGrid to greenlight my account. It was not a sensible, necessary anti-spam policy IMO, it was just poor execution.
      - 5y ago
EleanorKonik 5y ago
Ghost just won't let users upgrade from a complimentary plan right now and it's _maddening_ because I had to comp a bunch of people who would probably be happy to pay me if it wasn't a hassle, because of a billing error. I wish more businesses knew this lesson :(

samdung 5y ago

Have you tried https://sendwithses.com https://sendwithses.com or https://sendy.co/ https://sendy.co/ ?

pipnonsense 5y ago
I changed at the time to Mailgun and I am happy there, so not looking into other options for now. But at the time I look at those and preferred a solution with less upfront configuration required and less things to manage in general. It was a side-project that required a very quick solution. Mailgun was perfect for this.
kehers 5y ago
It's not the same as what Mailgun does. Mailgun lets you send emails programmatically. Sendy/Sendwithses lets you send campaigns from an interface (using your SES).