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Ask HN: Feedback for an API to send triggered emails?

10 points by hsuresh ↗ HN
Hi HN, Would love some feedback on our service. Triggering emails from your code sounds like a solved problem. We think not. Instead of writing your email logic in your code, we ask you to send events to us, as you'd do with Mixpanel/GA. You can then configure emails as triggers from our dashboard.

Benefits:

* Flexibility in adding/modifying your emails without code changes

* Test out different schedule intervals, email messages

* Add drip campaigns based on customer events - an "ordered" event is enough to send a transaction email, a feedback email and perhaps even a reminder email for a repeat purchase.

* We are adding support for push notifications/sms next, so especially useful if you are already sending different kinds of messages.

What do you think about the service? Would you use it?

(website: www.nudgespot.com/developers, in case you are curious)

(I tried posting this yesterday, but didn't see any responses, sorry for the repost.)

12 comments

[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 43.6 ms ] thread
anthony_franco
How would you position yourself differently from intercom.io? (I use them currently and they seem to do what you mention).
hsuresh
Intercom.io is similar. Intercom.io is seen as a service to help retain your customers. Though there are overlaps, our focus is to build an API that makes it easy to configure any kind of rule to trigger messages.

We hope to make it easy to configure rules like "send an email if a customer's total order value crosses $1000" or "Send a reminder if a customer's activity over a week is lower than their average" and so on.

soneca
I don't think repost is a problem (if you don't do it constantly and too much).

I would try another Show HN, but with the direct URL tomorrow - it worked for me, i did a no upvoted Show HN, them a no upvoted Ask HN, them a successfull 43 points Show HN. There is a lot of luck in it, try once more.

johns
This sounds like customer.io
hsuresh
It is, at the moment. Our focus is to make it easy to create any kind of rules for triggering emails. There are definitely overlaps with customer.io and intercom.io.
hsuresh
Also, i see that you've been part of IFTTT. We hope to build something more like IFTTT actually, but for processing events. Is it ok if i can ping you offline?
johns
yeah, absolutely
sudonim
Howdy!

Colin from Customer.io here. Sounds like you've got your own take on using events to send emails. Building this type of system gets harder the more you scale, but it's a lot of fun. Feel free to email me if you ever want to chat. You can probably guess my email.

Cheers, Colin

hsuresh
Thanks Colin! We've been fans of Customer.io, hopefully we can offer something that is both different and at least as good as Customer.io :). I'm taking up your offer and dropping you an email. All the best!
notduncansmith
It'd be difficult for me to justify a service like this over Mandrill. I saw where you compare them, but I don't find myself writing much "mailer code" (assuming this means what I think it means?) and I certainly don't have to make code changes just to change a template.

They also allow scheduled sending, though changing this would require a code change (minor, but honestly, this seems like the kind of thing I'd like to have in version control).

As far as email, it sounds like you're mostly providing what Mandrill is, but with a bit more abstraction. I'm really interested in seeing what you do with push/SMS though, because having all of that integrated into one platform sounds like a real value add.

I'd enjoy discussing this in depth with you if you'd like, email's in my profile.

hsuresh
You are right about how our service compares with Mandrill. But, there are a bunch of companies that we've spoken to, who do send a lot of emails, and they've found the abstraction we provide to be useful.

A big reason for the abstraction is to support SMS/push notifications. I'll drop you an email, but can't find it in your profile. Can you update it or drop me an email?

Thanks, Suresh

bitonomics
I have heard a lot of good things about SendGrid. They really understand transactional email.

www.sendgrid.com