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Ask HN: Cheapest and simplest solution for a daily email alert to myself?

I want to have a cloud-hosted, daily email with RSS feeds, stock prices, weather, web page changes, etc. The idea is to run a few scripts (Python) and then compile the results into an email that hits my inbox every day. I have heard people mention DigitalOcean and other similar solutions to doing this quickly. Any ideas? Beautiful HTML formatting would be a huge plus.

mytailorisrich 4y ago
A python script that uses an html template to send an email if very simple to write. The bigger job is probably to scrape the data, though that's also simple if you know specifically what you want from a given source.
- dontbenebby 4y ago
  Isn't sending out SMTP or whatever something hard to set up safely? Or are some cloud providers providing an API or something? I was under the impression you can't just write a script to blast out emails like you can say, SYN packets
  - jpcapdevila 4y ago
    There are cloud providers, I have personal experience using sendgrid. For small scale / personal stuff you can use gmail's SMTP. https://support.google.com/a/answer/176600?product_name=UnuFlow&hl=en&visit_id=637925297607296115-1260276470&rd=1&src=supportwidget0&hl=en https://support.google.com/a/answer/176600?product_name=UnuF...
McNutty 4y ago
If it really has to be cloud hosted then sounds like you could run your scripts in a VM in free tier of AWS/Azure
jpcapdevila 4y ago
Firebase free tier, you can create an scheduled function that runs your python code and sends the email. Super easy to deploy and it is set and forget. I'm sure you can fit your use cade in the free tier.
nreece 4y ago
Imo, Google Apps Script is the simplest (fully hosted/serverless, JavaScript SDK, integrated scheduler and mailer, Google Sheets integration) that I've come across so far for building low-code scripted tools, and cheapest too (free). https://developers.google.com/apps-script https://developers.google.com/apps-script

mytailorisrich 4y ago

A python script that uses an html template to send an email if very simple to write. The bigger job is probably to scrape the data, though that's also simple if you know specifically what you want from a given source.

dontbenebby 4y ago
Isn't sending out SMTP or whatever something hard to set up safely? Or are some cloud providers providing an API or something? I was under the impression you can't just write a script to blast out emails like you can say, SYN packets
- jpcapdevila 4y ago
  There are cloud providers, I have personal experience using sendgrid. For small scale / personal stuff you can use gmail's SMTP. https://support.google.com/a/answer/176600?product_name=UnuFlow&hl=en&visit_id=637925297607296115-1260276470&rd=1&src=supportwidget0&hl=en https://support.google.com/a/answer/176600?product_name=UnuF...

McNutty 4y ago

If it really has to be cloud hosted then sounds like you could run your scripts in a VM in free tier of AWS/Azure

jpcapdevila 4y ago

Firebase free tier, you can create an scheduled function that runs your python code and sends the email. Super easy to deploy and it is set and forget. I'm sure you can fit your use cade in the free tier.

nreece 4y ago

Imo, Google Apps Script is the simplest (fully hosted/serverless, JavaScript SDK, integrated scheduler and mailer, Google Sheets integration) that I've come across so far for building low-code scripted tools, and cheapest too (free). https://developers.google.com/apps-script https://developers.google.com/apps-script