
SendGrid Responds to Amazon's Simple Email Service - joshfraser
http://blog.sendgrid.com/a-word-from-your-friends-at-sendgrid/
======
krobertson
Customer of SendGrid as well and we're shelling out $400/mo with them.
Definitely planning on taking a look at SES.

SendGrid is a nice service, but we've had several nagging annoyances:

1) The credentials to send emails are the same as to login and change plan
settings. Seriously? Impossible to lock down the account on a large team from
a security perspective. Makes their subuser management feature totally
pointless.

2) Our dedicated IP got blocked by an RBL and we had to go to them about it.
If I'm paying them for the pain of deal with email crap, I expect them to
monitor their own logs and detect when an IP is blocked and come to me, not
the other way around. And it wasn't just our IP... the whole class B our IP
was on was blocked.

3) Their default behavior for bounces is once it fails, they never even
attempt delivery to that address for future messages. They accept the messages
our app sends, but just drop them. We had a DNS issue for a few days cause
daily email alerts to fail for several big customers and this behavior bit us
hard. Wasn't well documented. Come to find out we had a lot that were being
blocked.

4) Website is horrible. "Recent Activity" section says last bounce was 8 days
ago, but when you drill down to the "Email Activity", there were several as
recent as a half hour ago. Clicking the buttons to clear all entries on the
email lists don't do anything. Site is just slow and feels overly bloat.
Almost feels like a template.

~~~
timfalls
1) We're aware the credentials thing - it's a problem, and we're working to
resolve. Here is a community discussion with more details:
<http://send.gd/CLf>

2) We do our best to monitor blacklists and proactively notify customers as
soon as we detect their placement on an RBL. We also recognize that some RBL
information may get past us in certain instances. To address this, we're
increasing support staff by 66% next Monday. Finally, it should be noted that
some RBL's are legit, while others are, frankly, scams and exist for the wrong
reasons.

3) Some things we offer to address this issue: set your own policy for bounce
removal and remove them as often as you like; disable bounces so that we don't
track bounces at all; get bounce notifications - as soon as the bounce occurs,
you can remove it over our Web API.

4) This example could be account specific (please contact support@sendgrid.com
so we can look into your account and work to debug). However, it could be more
general - we realize our website is far from perfect and are working daily to
make improvements. We invite any and all bug/feedback/feature reports so we
can investigate, address, and deploy the fixes and enhancements that are most
important to users.

------
daeken
This isn't really a response. Only two lines relate to this at all: "We’ve
heard the news, read the blogs and monitored the tweets. And as the thoughts,
reactions, and sentiments roll in, we’re plugging away at what we do on a
daily basis: delivering on the future of email."

This is just a post saying what they do, how they do it, and why they're good.
It has nothing to do with Amazon SES at all.

~~~
biot

        > This is just a post saying what they do, how they do it, and why 
        > they're good. It has nothing to do with Amazon SES at all.
    

The implied point I got from it is that all those things they do and are good
at is what Amazon doesn't do. Somewhat like how Apple doesn't do a point-by-
point comparison of the iPhone vs. Android -- they just let the iPhone
features speak for themselves.

~~~
timfalls
You're dead on with that interpretation :)

------
patio11
Disclaimer: happy customer of both SendGrid and MailChimp.

The risk of one of the Borg companies doing this to you at any time is yet
another reason why you should not attempt to compete on price, and relatedly
why you should probably not seek the business of equisitvely price sensitive
customers.

~~~
tlianza
To be fair, the price isn't just slightly lower - it is nearly an order of
magnitude lower. Sending 500k messages a month with Amazon is $50, and with
SendGrid it's $400.

If you send that level of email a month (which is easy to do if you send a
weekly newsletter to a few hundred thousand users) you're now talking about
saving yourself a few grand a year with Amazon.

Given the "switch" can be as simple as changing some SMTP settings, this is a
big deal. I don't think the people who jump ship are necessarily hyper-price-
sensitive customers. Amazon is just turning this service into a commodity.

~~~
tomstuart
Amazon SES doesn't have an SMTP interface.

You can, however, configure an MTA to deliver through SES by delegating
delivery to a Perl script (e.g.
[http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/...](http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/IntegratingWithServer.Postfix.html)).

------
bjonathan
This is an extract from "Do More Faster" wrote by Isaac Saldana, the CEO of
SendGrid:

"When I offered dozens of companies SendGrid for $100 per month, they all said
yes. I raised the price to $300 per month, and they all said yes. $500?—yes.
Today, we are working with hundreds of companies, including well-known ones
like Foursquare, Gowalla, and GetSatisfaction. When you're selling a solution
to a problem and you find that nobody is saying no to your prices, you've
found some serious pain. We're building SendGrid to solve a very specific
problem that I discovered just by paying attention."

I guess it's time to change...

I'm a customer of sendgrid but I have to admit not a really happy one (the
website is shitty, the search is working half of the time, and I have the 20$
plan with heroku which mean that my mails are send about 30min after my
request because apparently on shared IP we need to wait...)

~~~
timfalls
What bothers us is that you are "not a really happy [customer]", yet your
reasoning is understandable. Your website issue is covered above in our
response to @krobertson. With regards to Email Activity Search: we’re working
on making this feature more stable (we’ve brought on a new web architect to
help as well) - also, we probably should have released it to a private beta
group for testing first. We will be taking a new beta testing approach going
forward (planning it now for our new newsletter app). For Heroku: we're close
to having a fresh API integration with them, which will be a huge improvement.
Future, similar integrations with other hosting services will be much better
with a seamless integration process for them and their users. It’s a top
priority item for us.

------
il
As mentioned elsewhere, Amazon is one of the largest email senders in the
world. They probably know a thing or two about deliverability.

~~~
MicahWedemeyer
While I agree on principle, Amazon is also a giant merchant who should know a
thing or two about payments, and their Amazon Flexible Payment System is a
horrible beast to work with.

Sometimes the "massive online store" domain knowledge doesn't seem to transfer
over to the AWS team.

------
ejwcom
This was a good response, if a little arrogant. But they have a right to be
arrogant. SendGrid is an amazing story. The execution has been exciting to
watch from afar. A great example. I have been a customer since they launched.

My issue is the pricing model, where you pay for 50k (or whatever) emails "per
month" but don't get them. If I send 45k one month, and then 55k the next, I
have to pay more for those extra 5k emails. I will pay a premium for a premium
service, but this is irritating. Irritating enough that I have been monitoring
the space waiting for a viable competitor. And with this policy, they are
certainly not earning any loyalty on my part. I would leave in a heartbeat.

~~~
alexknowshtml
Have you checked out our "pay for what you use" model at
<http://postmarkapp.com>?

~~~
pacemkr
Postmark do not allow bulk email, such as newsletters, and hence are not a
comparable product.

~~~
alexknowshtml
There's a reason for that - ISPs throttle delivery based on message type -
bulk vs. transactional. We work very hard to make sure that transactional
emails have NO reason to fail to be delivered, or even delayed. By allowing
bulk sending, your message is likely to get through eventually - but it might
end up behind a several hundred thousand/million message bulk email queue -
meaning that your customers' "forgot password" email or account verification
message could take hours to show up. For our customers, that's simply not
acceptable.

We've got 5+ years of experience with our bulk email service, Newsberry, to
back this up. Not only are our IP reputations carefully monitored and
maintained, but we keep bulk and transactional as far away from each other as
we can because they're treated SO differently by ISPs.

~~~
pacemkr
I've been sending both transactional and bulk email using SendGrid. If I
understand you correctly the only downside to that approach is that
transactional email may be delayed because it is coming from an IP that also
sends bulk email?

I was aware of Newsberry, but I still think that it is not comparable to
SendGrid.

Even when we concentrate on bulk email, on one hand there is Newsberry,
MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, Constant Contact, etc. And on the other are
SendGrid, AuthSMTP, and now Amazon. The former provide an all inclusive
solution: WYSIWG editing, templates, subscriber management, analytics, etc.
while the latter are an order of magnitude cheaper, but offer a bare-bones
solution that doesn't have much in the form of niceties and UI.

SendGrid is somewhere in the middle actually (and so is their pricing). They
have analytics (and subscriber management if you wish) and even a crude UI
where you can define email campaigns and newsletter templates (although
clearly not their core business.) These feature put them above and beyond
AuthSMTP which is basically an SMTP server. If Amazon has per campaign
analytics (from my very brief look they do), then SendGrid should really be
shacking in their boots, because Amazon has just undercut them big time
without compromising on core competencies.

------
ChuckChuck
SendGrid has about 1 month to lower it's price to at least $0.20 per thousand
if they want to keep my company (We send about 3 million emails per month).
They have provided me with a good service so far and I hope they are ready to
compete on price.

~~~
rgrieselhuber
For their sake, I hope they are not planning to compete on price.

------
staunch
Deliverability is the biggest issue. The other things they mention are just
nice-to-have. If they can prove Amazon's system has a significantly lower
deliverability rate they've got a solid argument to hold on to (for now).

~~~
timfalls
We truly believe that deliverability is where we win - it's been our focus
from day one. We've learned a lot about it (and continue learning every day),
and we use the lessons to serve customers better. While we're confident in our
practices that help with deliverability (namely, dedicated IPs), we can't jump
to conclusions - so we'll just have to wait and see how SES customers fair in
this area.

------
maverhick
A customer of sendgrid as well and we send over a million emails a month using
their services. Now we will try to send alerts/non transactional emails
through amazon ses to test them out. The price difference is too big to
ignore.

------
michaelbuckbee
I think what we're going to see are companies like SendGrid, AuthSMTP, etc
move to providing deliverability and analytics services on top of Amazon email
ala Heroku building on top of EC2.

~~~
joshfraser
Thats sounds good in theory, but I think the technical details will make it
impossible in practice.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
Mailchimp launches Simple Transcactional Email service on top of Amazon SES:
[http://blog.mailchimp.com/mailchimp-launches-
transactional-e...](http://blog.mailchimp.com/mailchimp-launches-
transactional-email-service-on-top-of-amazon-ses/)

------
pacemkr
I'm a very happy SendGrid user, but I simply cannot ignore the huge price
difference. I will be giving Amazon a shot.

Before SendGrid, I was using Campaign Monitor, it was great, but outrageously
expensive. SendGrid kicked off because it was an order of magnitude cheaper
that CM, Mailchimp, etc. It seems that Amazon did to SendGrid what SendGrid
did to "1 cent per email" providers such as Mailchimp.

~~~
pconf
Sorry for missing the point but this all seems like a lot of money for email.
100K/day outgoing is nothing that should tax a dual core CPU w/ SCSI disks and
100Mbps connectivity.

Are we talking about emails that aren't 100% legit? If so then what does SG
offer other than an ever changing set of geographically disperse outbound MXs?

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KimJangoMail
The pricing of Amazon SES is certainly very attractive, but it's worth
considering why the price is so low. If you are looking for a minimalist
service, then it makes sense to go with Amazon SES. I work for JangoSMTP and
we often have clients coming to us from other transactional email companies,
because they needed more than what these companies offered. Deliverability is
a major issue that comes up. You may be able to send out mass quantities of
email, but without an experienced email marketing provider you may struggle to
reach people's inboxes. Delivery is as much an art as it is a science, and it
takes constant focus to stay on top. JangoSMTP offers the choice between
sending via API or SMTP. With Amazon, you have to use the API. We also offer
open and click tracking, as well as advanced reporting (Google Analytics,
logging, etc.). If reporting is important to you, you will want to consider a
service like JangoSMTP that is more advanced than Amazon SES.

------
timfalls
We believe in our service and the premium value it provides over competing
services. We have our sights set on long term success and plan to continue our
leadership in the industry. Your comments here are awesome, and we welcome
further feedback at any time - on these topics and any others you want to
bring up. We appreciate the supporters and detractors, because all
perspectives must be taken into consideration in our efforts to continually
improve. Contact us directly (email, chat, phone, twitter) or just keep on
having your discussions here on Hacker News - we're listening ;)

\--Tim Falls, SendGrid

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al_james
How long before someone starts a start-up that adds open / click tracking to
SES for a small fee on top? Given that SES is an order of magnitude cheaper,
there is quite a bit of room to play with.

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mise
Argh. Logo anchor != Home page

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scsmith
Having played with the SES api they're just not the same thing. Sure
ultimately they deliver email but the functionality you get from an app like
SendGrid is far higher. SES might make sense for some transactional emails but
for anything marketing I don't think I'll be moving away from
SendGrid/MailChimp.

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slig
I've an account there because of the appsumo deal.

Please, fix your website and write some docs.

"Documentation for this feature is coming soon. Meanwhile, contact us if you
need any help."

~~~
timfalls
We recognize that documentation is of utmost importance for a service such as
ours. In most cases, a lack of documentation is intentional and reflects that
we are working on improving existing docs or writing the original content. All
we can say is that this will get better and better over time. Your
feedback/suggestions are always appreciated.

------
ciaogiorno
Put a fork in it.

