Best SMTP Solution For Self-Hosted Email?

Fiver

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Jan 30, 2009
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Trying to decide between Amazon SES and whatever else is out there. I see SendGrid added their own pay-as-you-go service and was wondering if it's as good as Amazon's.
 


SendGrid is the most god awful service ever. I've had my account suspended twice and limits reset to zero because THEY didn't send their own transactional email to my billing email on file. My CC expiry date lapsed, and I didn't realize that was the card on file until one of thousands of users trying to register decided to email us and find out why he never received the confirmation email.

These days, the IP reputation of SendGrid is also fairly shit. Your deliverability will suffer.

Isaac Saldana, Tim Jenkins, and Jose Lopez of SendGrid are all cock smokers. True story.

Amazon SES is fine. The process to complain to Amazon about abuse on their system is painful (not just an email, and they refuse to open attachments), so your complaints tend to only be from overly persistent users.
 
SendGrid is the most god awful service ever. I've had my account suspended twice and limits reset to zero because THEY didn't send their own transactional email to my billing email on file. My CC expiry date lapsed, and I didn't realize that was the card on file until one of thousands of users trying to register decided to email us and find out why he never received the confirmation email.

These days, the IP reputation of SendGrid is also fairly shit. Your deliverability will suffer.

Isaac Saldana, Tim Jenkins, and Jose Lopez of SendGrid are all cock smokers. True story.

Amazon SES is fine. The process to complain to Amazon about abuse on their system is painful (not just an email, and they refuse to open attachments), so your complaints tend to only be from overly persistent users.

I used SendGrid on a project last year. It was fine then. Are you sure you are getting a dedicated IP? I like the idea of using Amazon SES, but their interface is confusing as shit, and I don't think they have all the deliverability features of SG?
 
As an ex-Amazon SES user - they're good as long as you're not breaking their TOS and keeping your bounce/complaint rates low.

As soon as you train your older list to complain less - you should move over to own server, turn it to SMTP, connect it to whatever mailing platform you use - and "level up" the IP address. Low complaints/bounces = can build up some good inbox trust for new lead gen directly to that server.
 
I used SendGrid on a project last year. It was fine then. Are you sure you are getting a dedicated IP? I like the idea of using Amazon SES, but their interface is confusing as shit, and I don't think they have all the deliverability features of SG?

SendGrid dedicated IP's don't help. If all I wanted was an SMTP server, I'd install PMTA on the network and it'd be cheaper and easier.

"Hi, this is SendGrid support, how can I help you?"
"Yes, I'd like to get a dedicated IP and start sending 100,000 emails a day"
"Oh, you're going to have to warm the IP first"
"Okay, so how many emails a day, and how many days?"
"Lets see... 3,000/day for the first month?"
"So your service will queue my emails for me and make sure I'm only sending within the warmup limits right?"
"Well no, you need to do that"
"So you have pre-warmed IP's for me then, right?"
"Well no, you need to warm your own IP's"
"What is your service providing to me to improve deliverability?"
"Cold IP's, bounce management, and unsubscribe features, sir"

I don't get reports or anything useful from Sendgrid that justify there existence over a regular ESP. At least with Amazon you're getting pre-warmed IP's and instant high volume, even if you only send to your list once a month.

Also, compare your open rates. You'll find Sendgrid sucks compared to most of the competition.
 
+1 for SES. choose API or traditional smtp. Plugs into Route 53 DNS for auto DKIM records. bounce / complaints / reject stats. I really like it for transactional email
 

Looks pretty good although I have a couple of questions:

1. It offers dedicated IPs for $30/month. Why would I need to add a dedicated IP? (I'm currently on a VPS)
2. Do I view my reports in Mandrill/Amazon SES/etc or my self-hosted solution like ArpReach?
 
is it marketing ? transactional ? lot of diff options.

SES is good stuff , other option depending on actual need is MailGun from RackSpace. There are others that are cheaper, but DKIM etc is good to have.