
Mail for Good - quickthrower2
https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/mail-for-good/tree/heroku/stable
======
thrownaway954
FYI: the last commit was in Dec of 2019

[https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/mail-for-
good/commits/master](https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/mail-for-
good/commits/master)

there is an issue open still about the status of the project:

[https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/mail-for-
good/issues/329](https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/mail-for-good/issues/329)

~~~
quincyla
I use Mail for Good every week to send my email blast to 3.5 million people.
It works fine and is stable.

We haven't made any big changes to it recently because it hasn't broken. There
is definitely some maintenance we could do as far as updating libraries.

We're hoping to re-write parts of it to use AWS Lambda instead of a Linux
server, so we can further simplify use of it for less-technical users (a lot
of nonprofits don't have developers on staff).

------
davnicwil
This looks really good, but it mentions it uses AWS Simple Email Service to
actually send the emails.

I was under the impression that one of the big value adds of the more
expensive email services is that, basically, they work on solving the issue of
avoiding your email landing in spam, whereas if you use a more 'direct'
commodity service like AWS Simple Email Service or other cloud equivalents you
have to kind of solve that problem yourself which is really, really hard and
hence not worth the saving.

Is that roughly true? Or do I have it wrong?

~~~
fredley
Not being routed to Spam is largely a two-step process, which is of moderate
complexity in SES, but if you're browsing GitHub you can probably handle it:

* Setting up DKIM and SPF - Amazon makes this relatively painless, particularly if you're managing DNS in Route53

* Not spamming

~~~
old-gregg
I used to work at Mailgun. Believe me, there's a lot more to getting your mail
delivered. Simply configuring DNS stopped being enough maybe around 2006-08.

------
wiradikusuma
Another open source alternative:
[https://mailtrain.org/](https://mailtrain.org/)

------
cmroanirgo
> _An app for sending millions of emails as cheaply as possible. Mail for Good
> uses AWS Simple Email Service to send bulk emails at $0.10 per 1000 emails._

> _Mail for Good is fast and memory efficient, currently sending over 100
> emails per second on a 1gb Digital Ocean VPS._

> _We 've used Mail for Good to deliver newsletters to hundreds of thousands
> of campers per week._

... Good? YMMV, but personally, I'm not a fan of spam. Never will be.

~~~
riffic
>> deliver newsletters to hundreds of thousands of campers per week

> I'm not a fan of spam. Never will be

This isn't spam. It's a newsletter subscription people opt into by joining
their website as a user. Users can opt-out of this specific newsletter in
their FreeCodeCamp settings page and be fine and dandy afterwards.

Spam is something else entirely.

~~~
Nextgrid
Newsletters are the modern spam. "Spam" as we used to know it is actually a
solved problem nowadays on major e-mail providers with good spam filters.

Regarding newsletters, the majority of those are opt-out (as opposed to opt-
in) and the opt-out process is intentionally convoluted ("untick this checkbox
if you would prefer not to subscribe to our newsletter"), so as far as I'm
concerned it's indeed spam.

~~~
pmontra
I don't agree much with this assessment.

I voluntarily subscribed some of the Cooper Press weekly newsletters
[https://cooperpress.com/publications/](https://cooperpress.com/publications/)
They are definitely opt-in, not spam.

I regularly unsubscribe newsletters I didn't opt-in, usually from unknown
sources. Not many of them lately and the opt-out usually works. I remember a
couple of times I had to send an email with a mention of GDPR in it. It
worked.

So "the majority" of newsletters are modern spam, not really.

~~~
Nextgrid
I based my comment on what I see daily from non-technical people's inboxes.
They are packed with mountains of various commercial newsletters and typically
will get one or more of those per day.

There is definitely a minority out there like yourself that knows how to
manage it and only subscribes to a few select newsletters, for I think for the
majority of people, newsletters are a net negative otherwise you wouldn't see
people with thousands of unread emails and there wouldn't be so much hype
around tools like Hey.

------
nitwit005
> $0.10 per 1000 emails

That seems to be dramatically more expensive than SendGrid, at least based on
playing around with the pricing slider on their website.

Plus you're paying some other costs like bandwidth and mailing list
maintenance. Most of these email providers have the idea that you can create a
mailing list, and then ask them to send mailings based on some template.

~~~
MatekCopatek
Are you sure? I just did the same and SendGrid's cheapest plan seems to be $15
for 50,000 emails, which is $0.30 per 1000 emails, so 3x as much.

Also, this quote seems to be based on using AWS Simple Email Service. Lower
down they say:

> We're currently sending weekly email blasts of over 800,000 emails in 4
> hours on a $10 per month Digital Ocean VPS with 1gb memory and 1 core
> processor.

~~~
nitwit005
You are correct. I had a mistake in my conversion to cents.

------
niftylettuce
Non-profits and startups are welcome to use my service for free.

[https://forwardemail.net](https://forwardemail.net)

------
nicetryguy
I can't stand when project names contain false altruism. Especially one built
to send spam emails.

~~~
TheRealPomax
Cool opinion.

Ever heard the one about the non-profit activist orgs that had to send emails
to tens of thousands of people who had already opted into receiving emails and
had to allocate substantial portions of their budget to sending out their
donation drive emails because the system keeps breaking and different
companies and government departments keep finding new ways to make things
worse, requiring regular mail-outs, and there wasn't really any near-zero-
conf, _actually_ cheap off-the-shelf solution for that?

It's hilarious, the punch line involves being called false altruists and
spammers.

~~~
Nextgrid
How many of those people actually, intentionally opt-in as opposed to
forgetting to uncheck a checkbox?

Out of those people that did intentionally opt-in, would they still opt-in if
they knew the frequency of the e-mails?

I remember being on the receiving end of exactly the same scenario you
describe - non-profit entity sending spam. I actually intentionally subscribed
when signing a petition and assumed they'd e-mail once a month or so which I
would've be fine with.

I was so wrong - they were sending some crap every few days, and even worse
they attempted to make them look personal (sent from a real-looking name) even
though it's the same garbage they email to hundreds of thousands of other
suckers that assumed good faith on their part. In a handful of weeks my inbox
was dominated by their spam.

Another case was for a tech-related non-profit that I donated to and
explicitly unchecked any opportunity for them to spam me. Well guess what, one
year later they still did. They apologized afterwards and said it was a
mistake (fair enough), and yet some time later I got yet another spam campaign
from them I had to unsubscribe from.

~~~
TheRealPomax
What the hell does "if they knew the frequency of the e-mails" even mean? As
someone who opted into several of these orgs: yes, of course? I know the
frequency _because I get the emails_ : if that bothers me, I can stop funding
them, or I can understand that getting more of them means the world is getting
more fucked up and I should probably seriously consider stepping up my game in
supporting orgs that help fight this fucked up world.

~~~
Nextgrid
I meant knowing the frequency in advance. I expected them to be respectful and
email once a month or so. If I knew they’d be sending crap every few days I
wouldn’t have signed up.

~~~
TheRealPomax
How is once a month a cheap endeavour?

------
29athrowaway
If you are sending millions of e-mails, it's very likely not for good.

------
mikl
An efficient spam cannon? What’s good about that?

------
Animats
"Email campaign management tool" = spam tool

Sorry.

~~~
tibu
From a valid newsletter you can unsubscribe anytime.

~~~
aahhahahaaa
the operative word here is "valid"

~~~
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