

Ask HN: Do you like Mailchimp? Alternatives? - famfam

I'm considering starting up nudge emails for lost http://todoneapp.com signups. Mailchimp seems like a popular service, but my <i>signup</i> email from them went into my Gmail spam folder. That seems like a really bad sign.<p>Anyone have any opinions on Mailchimp or similar alternatives?
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dgunnars
I like MailChimp fine. It does what it's supposed to do, and does it well. I
have also used Mad Mimi and CampaignMonitor.

I'm sticking with CM for now. It has more features and offers you the
capability of setting up clients and allowing the to send email campaigns
under your account, which can be cool. It also has excellent template
features.

All three are good, but this depends a lot on how much power you need, the
number of emails you're going to send. The pricing structure varies a bit so I
would look at that and figure out what works for you.

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gstar
We use something custom - we deliver contact emails via Google AppEngine, via
a private webservice.

It was really simple to set up, virtually free (0.0001c per email), and
Google's got pretty much the gold standard for delivering mail.

One drawback is your from: user has to be verified and set up in the AppEngine
dashboard (not difficult), and on the free AppEngine account you can only send
2k emails per day. Once you're on billing, the quota sky high.

Let me know if you'd like to see some code.

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famfam
Thanks for talking about this. Definitely aware of the AppEngine solution, but
one of the reasons I was looking for a turnkey solution was for guidance in
complying with CAN-SPAM as well as having them manage opt-outs, bounces,
things like that.

Agree with the other commenter that it would be killer for you to open source
your app :)

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ordinaryman
I am currently working on a Google App Engine based CRM app, which now has a
preview of this feature : Bulk-email, using email-templates..

[http://blogs.ifreetools.com/2010/05/feature-preview-email-
te...](http://blogs.ifreetools.com/2010/05/feature-preview-email-templates-
and.html)

The app is not open-source - but free with resource restrictions and ads.
Custom deployments are available for as low as $99/year (yes, per year), which
enables you to use the free quota (upto 2000 emails / day) and purchase
additional resources as required directly from Google.

Works with Google / Google Apps accounts.

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aaroneous
I prefer Campaign Monitor. Their interface was easier to understand and get
started with.

Plus, MailChimp automatically filtered out a lot of valid addresses and I
couldn't find any way to override that (for instance admin@site.com would
cause an error because of "admin").

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MadQA
There's a simple straight alternative called YMLP (<http://ymlp.com>). They're
dirt cheap and they're more than 10 years on a market.

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trevelyan
Sendgrid.com has been very good for us.

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Skyline
We also use SendGrid and have been very happy with it.

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justinchen
Ditto for SendGrid -- works very well for programmatic emails.

We also use MailChimp for some manual campaign-type emails.

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japherwocky
Shameless plug, I am the author of a mailing list tool:
<http://simplemailer.pearachute.com>

It's still a little beta, but several businesses are using it, and support is
an email away. :)

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imp
I've used MailChimp and I think it's great. No issues with spam. I use their
RSS-to-email feature a lot, and it saves me tons of time. Haven't tried any
other delivery services.

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fabiandesimone
You can try MadMimi.com and Aweber.com (not sure how the integrations works or
their API's)

