

Ask HN: What's a great email deliverability service? - _sentient

I currently have a web app that sends out a fair amount of (non-spam) email, and I'm finding that some of it is getting caught up in user's spam filters. I looked around for a solid email deliverability service, and found there were tons of choices out there. Would you guys recommend any particular service? Price, reliability and ease of integration would be my primary concerns.
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stevelosh
I've only tried Postmark ( <http://postmarkapp.com/> ), but they've always
done exactly what I needed with no problems so I never bothered looking
elsewhere. Their Python library is great (they even have a Django email
backend for it).

If they don't have a wrapper library for your particular language, their web
service is simple enough that you can write your own in less than a hundred
lines: [https://github.com/sjl/clojure-
postmark/blob/master/src/post...](https://github.com/sjl/clojure-
postmark/blob/master/src/postmark/core.clj)

(I'm not affiliated with Postmark, I'm just a happy customer)

~~~
ryantownsend
I've been using Postmark for a while now, it's a no brainer to add to all of
my projects - for Rails it takes literally a few seconds to integrate and that
fact alone makes it worth using.

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old-gregg
<http://mailgun.net> \- we're not just yet another email deliverability
service, we are a fully featured ESP for apps: our servers aren't simple
senders, they can host mailboxes, handle replies and bounce mail as well. If
you do everything right, all your mail will go to Inbox.

Full disclaimer: I am one of the cofounders.

~~~
j45
I have 2 friends using mailgun and I'm playing around with it myself. Cool
stats, and it handles sending AND receiving email, not just sending.

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raghus
SendGrid (<http://sendgrid.com>). My app's email needs are more modest (in the
several thousands per month rather than the millions) but I've never ever had
to worry one minute about an email not reaching the recipient since I went
with SendGrid.

(Not affiliated with them - just a happy customer)

~~~
timfalls
thanks to @raghus @KenCochrane and @SePP for sharing their experiences with
sendgrid. just wanted to chime in and point out 2 things: we offer an inbound
Parse API for receiving email into your app (<http://bit.ly/oA2GA7>) and offer
pay-as-you-go pricing similar to SES and a free plan that allows 200 email/day
(<http://send.gd/o1fNtT>). for what it's worth, based on my discussions with
developers around the world, postmark and mailgun are solid solutions that
would likely fit the needs described in the original post here.

thanks,

tim

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nixme
Mailgun (<http://mailgun.net/>). The guys over there care a lot about email
and deliverability. Their support is prompt and always helpful. Can't
recommend them enough.

(I'm not affiliated, just really pleased with their service).

~~~
llambda
Mailgun is superb! We use them for our service and I can't say enough good
things about them: the API is excellent and the people running the company are
very helpful and considerate.

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KenCochrane
I have used socketlabs.com and sendgrid.com, they are about the same in
features and price. Amazon SES is still fairly new and doesn't have all the
same features, but is much cheaper.

If you want to get on the email whitelists you might want to check out
returnpath.net or SuretyMail.com

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juddlyon
Sendgrid is fantastic. Well-documented, easy-to-use, and full-featured. We
recently set it up for a client and were impressed with the stats in
particular.

Postmark looks nice too. I'd be inclined to trust my money to the same crew
that runs Beanstalk.

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ricofish
Here's some other deatails on our
mail..<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3ftheAFHjQ>

    
    
        Ideal for high volume (bulk) or single (transactional) email
        Connect from SMTP or API
        Intelligent queuing & message delivery
        RepCheck reputation monitoring tool
        Open, read and click tracking
        Self-adjusted throttling by ISP
        Dedicated IP(s) available
        SPF/Domain Key Creation Tool
        Spam complaint & bounce reporting
        Suppression Lists for each user
        24/7 tech support
        Account management
        Global deliverability monitoring

~~~
dhyasama
No idea why this was downvoted. Original post is asking for a service just
like this. Thanks for sharing, Rich and welcome to HN!

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amc3456
DynECT Email (<http://dyn.com/enterprise-email/dynect-email>)

Many of our clients rely on email to drive their revenue, as that may be the
case for you folks as well. We solve this very specific problem by ensuring
delivery of their email to the intended destination (the INBOX!). We are able
to ensure deliverability of large email quantities by working with hundreds of
ISPs, monitoring bounces, improving and maintaining sender scores and many
other specifics with a product called SmartMTA. Any incremental increase in
your email delivery rate has a direct impact on your bottom line.

There are many vendors who do a great job helping folks manage lists, content
and templates, but there is nobody out there who does as good a job as us
ensuring delivery and providing analytics. We are working with over 1,000
Enterprise Level Accounts, including Twitter, Netflix, Groupon, Pandora,
Photobucket, Mashable, Zappos and many more. We currently have clients that do
anywhere from 50,000 emails to 400+ million emails a month! And did I mention
no downtime since our inception?

Feel free to ping me at acaron@dyn.com to chat about your business needs!

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jontas
Sailthru (<https://www.sailthru.com/>) is a good one. API is easy to use and
they offer a level of analytics that is far more advanced than what most other
companies can offer.

Disclaimer: I am not a Sailthru employee but I have done a number of
integrations for clients of theirs.

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SoftwareMaven
This seems like a good read to ask a question I have: my app needs to be able
to send mail as the user of the app. I would prefer not to get SMTP
credentials from users. I know SMTP will allow an envelope to be written by
somebody else, but it is also a flag for spam. Is there a way (links would be
great) to not be flagged as spam? Do third party mailers support this?

~~~
pardner
Sendgrid supports this and we have used it to allow our users to have our
system send emails on their behalf. The caveats are: (1) your email will
contain info in the header that indicates it's on behalf of, which probably
affects deliverability somewhat (we got very good results nonetheless) and (2)
to get good deliverability your account probably needs to be at least "silver"
level service which gives you dedicated IP address and some associated
whitelabeling DNS entries. In other words, the more trustwoorthy your mailer
domain is, the better deliverability you will experience.

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tobias_herkula
if you can handle your amount of mail, set up spf and working rdns records for
your sending domain, implement dkim and use returnpath. no need for an esp if
you don't need advanced reporting and campaign management features...

i'm a deliverability manager for an european esp...

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csmcdermott
I've set up AuthSMTP (<http://www.authsmtp.com/>) for a number of sites, and
they've been super reliable. I don't think they have an API or anything fancy,
but they are extremely cheap at low volumes.

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SePP
We use sendgrid and are pretty happy with deliverability rates (we have our
own dedicated IP with them). I know postmark and amazon SES offer similar
features but never used them.

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ricofish
Hi my name is Rich Fisher.. Please check us out dyn.com.. We are doing some
great things when it comes to mail .. rfisher@dyn.com

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chrisgo
Mailgun is great!

