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This seems to be closer to how Mandrill works, and it's exactly what got me to sign up for them only a few days ago. I knew about Mailgun and Sendgrid before,

This seems to be closer to how Mandrill works, and it's exactly what got me to sign up for them only a few days ago. I knew about Mailgun and Sendgrid before, and started looking into them first but their pricing tiers turned me off and got me to keep searching until I found Mandrill. My app is very small, just bootstrapping without any funding so I'm trying to be very careful how I spend my money. At first I see that Mailgun's minimum was $19/month while Sendgrid's silver plan is $10/month. Easy, Sendgrid wins. Oops, I want to support inbound email though. Sendgrid will give you that on the trial plan, but not on the $10 silver plan. Suddenly I'm up to $80/month to use Sendgrid. Mailgun wins here. But before I even noticed that I had already signed up for Sendgrid (believing I'd be paying $10/month), but had to wait like 5 hours and then I received some email from them basically demanding that I tell them what my app is, why I need email, what is the purpose of me sending email. Maybe it's for market research, but it didn't come across that way. It came across as "we assume you're a dirty spammer". Of course if I was a spammer I'd just give them so BS answer, I wouldn't admit it. I can't say call a winner, only a lower: Sendgrid. Mandrill and SES both treat you like you expect; you sign up, they cap you at ~250 emails/day for a bit and then you're fine. Sendgrid fail. Anyway, then my friend points me over to Mandrill and I sign up. The pricing model fit us well.. up to 12k emails free, then $0.20/thousand after that. In the state my app is right now I probably won't go over 12k for another few months, and once I do go over that limit I'm not going to find myself jumping suddenly to something like $80/month. If I had been setting this all up just a week later (that is, now) I'd probably be on Mailgun due to this new pricing model.

prostoalex 13y ago
Inbox providers keep track of reputation of an IP address, so most outbound e-mail service providers guard their IPs, since even a few bad apples can cause havoc for existing customers. Not saying it's justified, but there's some verification that needs to happen sooner or later.
- bratsche 13y ago
  Right, but that's the point of SES and Mandrill limiting you to like 250/day at first and gradually increasing your limit. Asking you to write an essay telling them what you're using email for is not verification.
kijin 13y ago
The same thing happened to me with SendGrid. I gave them the essay they asked for, just to see whether they'd ask for anything even more ridiculous. Thankfully they didn't, and they unlocked my account so quickly I suspect they didn't even read my intentionally extremely verbose reply. My best guess is that the essay request serves as a CAPTCHA.
gingerlime 13y ago
Given the higher price, what are the advantages of mailgun over Mandrill worth paying extra for?
veesahni 13y ago
If you do a lot of inbound, another thing to consider is difference in pricing practices: SendGrid and Mandrill inbound is currently complimentary to customers. To receive an inbound email via Mailgun, you pay once for it to be received by mailgun servers, and once for it to be delivered to your webhook.
- old-gregg 13y ago
  >you pay once for it to be received by mailgun servers, and once for it to be delivered to your webhook. Mailgunner here. This does not sound right. Can you please reach out to me via address in profile? Mailgun does not charge for webhooks, you're probably confsuing this with email relaying (which we also do). Also it is impossible to have complimentary inbound email of production quality due to the need for quality spam filtering. Handling spam in production setting (throughput, quality of service, uptime, performance) for free would mean wiping out CloudMark and other spam filtering vendors. In other words, as always, you get what you pay for. Mailgun has always been known for being a true bi-directional programmable ESP and a sizable percentage of our traffic is inbound.
  - veesahni 13y ago
    Ev, you and Taylor were on the thread I had last week with Travis about this pricing practice. Will reach out.
ezl 13y ago
I can't figure out the sendgrid pricing at all. 10/mo for 40k emails and 80/mo for 100k emails doesn't fit a normal model of reducing price for incremental usage and there's no clear explanation for it. I use sendgrid, and I thought I was using mailgun, but now after seeing the pricing simplicity and ease I'm feeling like I should make the switch. What reason would I rationally have at the <100k emails level for staying with sendgrid? Additionally, for the lite plan with sendgrid, they don't include email open and click tracking (even though they DO for the FREE tiers). Would love an explanation for why this is sensible.

prostoalex 13y ago

Inbox providers keep track of reputation of an IP address, so most outbound e-mail service providers guard their IPs, since even a few bad apples can cause havoc for existing customers. Not saying it's justified, but there's some verification that needs to happen sooner or later.

bratsche 13y ago
Right, but that's the point of SES and Mandrill limiting you to like 250/day at first and gradually increasing your limit. Asking you to write an essay telling them what you're using email for is not verification.

kijin 13y ago

The same thing happened to me with SendGrid. I gave them the essay they asked for, just to see whether they'd ask for anything even more ridiculous. Thankfully they didn't, and they unlocked my account so quickly I suspect they didn't even read my intentionally extremely verbose reply. My best guess is that the essay request serves as a CAPTCHA.

gingerlime 13y ago

Given the higher price, what are the advantages of mailgun over Mandrill worth paying extra for?

veesahni 13y ago

If you do a lot of inbound, another thing to consider is difference in pricing practices: SendGrid and Mandrill inbound is currently complimentary to customers. To receive an inbound email via Mailgun, you pay once for it to be received by mailgun servers, and once for it to be delivered to your webhook.

old-gregg 13y ago
>you pay once for it to be received by mailgun servers, and once for it to be delivered to your webhook. Mailgunner here. This does not sound right. Can you please reach out to me via address in profile? Mailgun does not charge for webhooks, you're probably confsuing this with email relaying (which we also do). Also it is impossible to have complimentary inbound email of production quality due to the need for quality spam filtering. Handling spam in production setting (throughput, quality of service, uptime, performance) for free would mean wiping out CloudMark and other spam filtering vendors. In other words, as always, you get what you pay for. Mailgun has always been known for being a true bi-directional programmable ESP and a sizable percentage of our traffic is inbound.
- veesahni 13y ago
  Ev, you and Taylor were on the thread I had last week with Travis about this pricing practice. Will reach out.

ezl 13y ago

I can't figure out the sendgrid pricing at all. 10/mo for 40k emails and 80/mo for 100k emails doesn't fit a normal model of reducing price for incremental usage and there's no clear explanation for it. I use sendgrid, and I thought I was using mailgun, but now after seeing the pricing simplicity and ease I'm feeling like I should make the switch. What reason would I rationally have at the <100k emails level for staying with sendgrid? Additionally, for the lite plan with sendgrid, they don't include email open and click tracking (even though they DO for the FREE tiers). Would love an explanation for why this is sensible.