
Show HN: Maildown – super simple email API - chris140957
https://maildown.dev
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chris140957
Hi, I just launched Maildown.

As a serial hacker, I've built a lot of small applications over the years and
have always found email setup (whether transactional or marketing) to be a bit
of a chore. I don't like the WYSIWYG editors or the process of manually
uploading CSV contact lists that all the big email providers seem to use.

I've created Maildown to simplify this process - its just a single REST API
that accepts emails in markdown syntax, and allows you to generate and send
beautiful emails simply and quickly

Thanks for looking Chris

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kevsim
Cool! Do you handle updating users’ email addresses? That’s a challenge we’ve
had with sendgrid. A user updates their email address and now they’re no
longer unsubscribed if they unsubscribed previously.

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chris140957
We currently don't support that either - but give me one day and I'll come up
with a solution for this...

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kevsim
What works in other systems (intercom, for example) is allowing callers to
pass a user ID with every call. Then you can match on that and unsubscribe the
user rather than the email itself.

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setr
We can solve any problem by introducing an extra level of indirection

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jetti
I'm curious as to how you are sending the emails under the hood to make the
best effort that the emails don't get flagged as spam.

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chris140957
Emails are all sent by AWS. When you first sign up, you're sent a verification
email from AWS to confirm your ownership of that address. I'm also hoping to
improve this further in the near future by adding DKIM verification also.

Most of the complexity in building this app has been around preventing abuse
of the service for the purpose of sending spam emails by closely monitoring
what's being sent via AWS SNS.

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manceraio
Love the idea. I had a similar idea but using some type of WYSIWYG templating,
but never started. I was afraid of finding a sustainable marketing channel.
There is a lot of competition and any type of paid ads for those keywords are
extremely high. I hope you'll figure it out!

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chris140957
Thanks, this is actually my second attempt at launching this - I tried and
gave up fairly quickly a year or so ago. But actually I've built a few side
projects in total and I've always thought this sort of service would add more
value to myself then any of the other things I've built.

I think the right way to build this up is to target a niche, rather than
attempt to compete with the big players, so that's what I'm hoping to do
eventually

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manceraio
For me one of the pain points I had as a beginner was setting the DNS records.
I couldn't figure out what I was doing and the propagation time was making me
anxious because I never knew if I implemented it right. Also, I think SNS has
a limit of 10000 domains, do you know what to do after that?

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alixaxel
Your branding is pointing to a tailwind CSS starter page.

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chris140957
Thanks for the heads up, I'll get that updated ASAP

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mritchie712
your style sheet is being blocked for me:

Refused to apply style from '[https://maildown.dev/'](https://maildown.dev/')
because its MIME type ('text/html') is not a supported stylesheet MIME type,
and strict MIME checking is enabled.

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mritchie712
typo: "way to end beautiful"

Also, I'd get rid of the image or make it darker.

Good luck!

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chris140957
Thanks, updated the typo now, and will have a think about the image

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ab_testing
What does this mean - "Start Free Now" Where is the pricing page and why is it
hidden ?

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chris140957
I've changed the copy on this button now - I agree it wasn't great. The
pricing page was previously only visible to logged in users (purely because it
highlights the current plan, and because its the starting point of the
checkout process) but I've edited this now too to make it visible from the
landing page.

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e12e
Typo I presume?:

> Markdown syntax

> Maildown supports _mrkdown_ syntax

