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Email delivery is also one of those interesting things where even small amounts of downtime are tolerated because email is treated as an unreliable protocol. Mu
by atomicnumber3 3y ago
Email delivery is also one of those interesting things where even small amounts of downtime are tolerated because email is treated as an unreliable protocol. Must be a bit more comfortable to be in that biz. Although I guess also that means your business involves making customers happy on an unreliable protocol. So maybe it's about the same overall then...
- upofadown 3y agoNot so much unreliable as asynchronous. SMTP is a better late than never sort of a protocol.
- 8organicbits 3y agoWebsites that perform login via a magic link sent via email: take notice. These sites have broken login when email is slow.
- steve_adams_86 3y agoThat’s a great insight that I hadn’t considered before. Are you familiar with what the failure mode is like with these systems? I’m assuming the login link shows up eventually, but not immediately?
- 8organicbits 3y agoIf we're talking about a five minute delay in email, the user may get bored of waiting and decide not to log in. If we're talking an hour long delay, the link in the email may be expired and won't work any longer. I think I've seen email links that expire as quickly as 15 minutes. It's possible some mail servers would have very short retry windows, so if your mail server was offline briefly a sending server could give up trying and fail the delivery. For a login link that expires quickly, it's probably not worth retrying for several hours or days.