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Ask HN: What's a great email deliverability service?

19 points by _sentient ↗ HN
I currently have a web app that sends out a fair amount of (non-spam) email, and I'm finding that some of it is getting caught up in user's spam filters. I looked around for a solid email deliverability service, and found there were tons of choices out there. Would you guys recommend any particular service? Price, reliability and ease of integration would be my primary concerns.

24 comments

[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 62.8 ms ] thread
SePP
We use sendgrid and are pretty happy with deliverability rates (we have our own dedicated IP with them). I know postmark and amazon SES offer similar features but never used them.
ricofish
Hi my name is Rich Fisher.. Please check us out dyn.com.. We are doing some great things when it comes to mail .. rfisher@dyn.com
stevelosh
I've only tried Postmark ( http://postmarkapp.com/ ), but they've always done exactly what I needed with no problems so I never bothered looking elsewhere. Their Python library is great (they even have a Django email backend for it).

If they don't have a wrapper library for your particular language, their web service is simple enough that you can write your own in less than a hundred lines: https://github.com/sjl/clojure-postmark/blob/master/src/post...

(I'm not affiliated with Postmark, I'm just a happy customer)

bradleyland
Another happy Postmark customer here. Great API, simple website, and fantastic deliverability.
ryantownsend
I've been using Postmark for a while now, it's a no brainer to add to all of my projects - for Rails it takes literally a few seconds to integrate and that fact alone makes it worth using.
ricofish
Here's some other deatails on our mail..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3ftheAFHjQ

    Ideal for high volume (bulk) or single (transactional) email
    Connect from SMTP or API
    Intelligent queuing & message delivery
    RepCheck reputation monitoring tool
    Open, read and click tracking
    Self-adjusted throttling by ISP
    Dedicated IP(s) available
    SPF/Domain Key Creation Tool
    Spam complaint & bounce reporting
    Suppression Lists for each user
    24/7 tech support
    Account management
    Global deliverability monitoring
dhyasama
No idea why this was downvoted. Original post is asking for a service just like this. Thanks for sharing, Rich and welcome to HN!
old-gregg
http://mailgun.net - we're not just yet another email deliverability service, we are a fully featured ESP for apps: our servers aren't simple senders, they can host mailboxes, handle replies and bounce mail as well. If you do everything right, all your mail will go to Inbox.

Full disclaimer: I am one of the cofounders.

j45
I have 2 friends using mailgun and I'm playing around with it myself. Cool stats, and it handles sending AND receiving email, not just sending.
jontas
Sailthru (https://www.sailthru.com/) is a good one. API is easy to use and they offer a level of analytics that is far more advanced than what most other companies can offer.

Disclaimer: I am not a Sailthru employee but I have done a number of integrations for clients of theirs.

nixme
Mailgun (http://mailgun.net/). The guys over there care a lot about email and deliverability. Their support is prompt and always helpful. Can't recommend them enough.

(I'm not affiliated, just really pleased with their service).

llambda
Mailgun is superb! We use them for our service and I can't say enough good things about them: the API is excellent and the people running the company are very helpful and considerate.
KenCochrane
I have used socketlabs.com and sendgrid.com, they are about the same in features and price. Amazon SES is still fairly new and doesn't have all the same features, but is much cheaper.

If you want to get on the email whitelists you might want to check out returnpath.net or SuretyMail.com

raghus
SendGrid (http://sendgrid.com). My app's email needs are more modest (in the several thousands per month rather than the millions) but I've never ever had to worry one minute about an email not reaching the recipient since I went with SendGrid.

(Not affiliated with them - just a happy customer)

timfalls
thanks to @raghus @KenCochrane and @SePP for sharing their experiences with sendgrid. just wanted to chime in and point out 2 things: we offer an inbound Parse API for receiving email into your app (http://bit.ly/oA2GA7) and offer pay-as-you-go pricing similar to SES and a free plan that allows 200 email/day (http://send.gd/o1fNtT). for what it's worth, based on my discussions with developers around the world, postmark and mailgun are solid solutions that would likely fit the needs described in the original post here.

thanks,

tim

tyrelb
agree on Sendgrid. Easy to use, and have great API documentation.
[dead] tyrelb
agree on Sendgrid. Easy to use, and have great API documentation.
SoftwareMaven
This seems like a good read to ask a question I have: my app needs to be able to send mail as the user of the app. I would prefer not to get SMTP credentials from users. I know SMTP will allow an envelope to be written by somebody else, but it is also a flag for spam. Is there a way (links would be great) to not be flagged as spam? Do third party mailers support this?
pardner
Sendgrid supports this and we have used it to allow our users to have our system send emails on their behalf. The caveats are: (1) your email will contain info in the header that indicates it's on behalf of, which probably affects deliverability somewhat (we got very good results nonetheless) and (2) to get good deliverability your account probably needs to be at least "silver" level service which gives you dedicated IP address and some associated whitelabeling DNS entries. In other words, the more trustwoorthy your mailer domain is, the better deliverability you will experience.
tobias_herkula
if you can handle your amount of mail, set up spf and working rdns records for your sending domain, implement dkim and use returnpath. no need for an esp if you don't need advanced reporting and campaign management features...

i'm a deliverability manager for an european esp...

juddlyon
Sendgrid is fantastic. Well-documented, easy-to-use, and full-featured. We recently set it up for a client and were impressed with the stats in particular.

Postmark looks nice too. I'd be inclined to trust my money to the same crew that runs Beanstalk.

csmcdermott
I've set up AuthSMTP (http://www.authsmtp.com/) for a number of sites, and they've been super reliable. I don't think they have an API or anything fancy, but they are extremely cheap at low volumes.
amc3456
DynECT Email (http://dyn.com/enterprise-email/dynect-email)

Many of our clients rely on email to drive their revenue, as that may be the case for you folks as well. We solve this very specific problem by ensuring delivery of their email to the intended destination (the INBOX!). We are able to ensure deliverability of large email quantities by working with hundreds of ISPs, monitoring bounces, improving and maintaining sender scores and many other specifics with a product called SmartMTA. Any incremental increase in your email delivery rate has a direct impact on your bottom line.

There are many vendors who do a great job helping folks manage lists, content and templates, but there is nobody out there who does as good a job as us ensuring delivery and providing analytics. We are working with over 1,000 Enterprise Level Accounts, including Twitter, Netflix, Groupon, Pandora, Photobucket, Mashable, Zappos and many more. We currently have clients that do anywhere from 50,000 emails to 400+ million emails a month! And did I mention no downtime since our inception?

Feel free to ping me at acaron@dyn.com to chat about your business needs!