Emails - 500K monthly, 1K hourly

bikegremlin

Hi all,

I'm looking for a way to send mass emails to paying customers (notifications, re-schedules etc.).
So no email marketing nonsense.

Volume used right now is 500 emails per hour.
I'd prefer to be able to send up to 1,000 per hour, but 500 is not a deal breaker.

Monthly volume is up to 500,000 emails (usually under half of that).

API option (to make the application create a list based on criteria and send it to the service, having the service then worry about delivery, during the following hours).

Urgency is not crucial, transactional emails are handled separately.
This is for notifications that should arrive within the first day or two since they are sent (preferably on the same day).

Budget?
As low as possible to allow for a decent quality stable service.
Sendgrid ask for about $90 for 200K per month, with a dedicated IP.
Wouldn't mind paying less, but if it costs more - then it costs more, what can you do?

Sendgrid service is something I'd avoid based on my recent experience.

Can anyone recommend a decent solution?

EDIT:
I forgot to note this:
I'd like for the business employees to be able to send an email to a pre-defined list, and be allowed to edit the from email (keeping the same domain, but different account).
That's for the manually sent mass notifications.

Sure, one could develop an app for that too, but it would be nice if one doesn't have to.

Abdullah

ZeptoMail charges around 2.5EUR per 10,000 transactional emails.

i.e. 50EUR for 200K emails or 125EUR for 500K emails.

We use them & haven't got any complaint so far.

skorupion

Amazon SES would most likely be the cheapest

Mason

@skorupion said:
Amazon SES would most likely be the cheapest

Yep, $0.0001 per message. So $20 for 200k, $50 for 500k, etc.

bikegremlin

@Mason said:

@skorupion said:
Amazon SES would most likely be the cheapest

Yep, $0.0001 per message. So $20 for 200k, $50 for 500k, etc.

Do you know how tricky it is to configure and work with?
Compared to the other "out-of-the-box" solutions like ZeptoMail?

EDIT:
I forgot to note this:
I'd like for the business employees to be able to send an email to a pre-defined list, and be allowed to edit the from email (keeping the same domain, but different account).
That's for the manually sent mass notifications.

Sure, one could develop an app for that too, but it would be nice if one doesn't have to.

coo

@bikegremlin said:

@Mason said:

@skorupion said:
Amazon SES would most likely be the cheapest

Yep, $0.0001 per message. So $20 for 200k, $50 for 500k, etc.

Do you know how tricky it is to configure and work with?
Compared to the other "out-of-the-box" solutions like ZeptoMail?

EDIT:
I forgot to note this:
I'd like for the business employees to be able to send an email to a pre-defined list, and be allowed to edit the from email (keeping the same domain, but different account).
That's for the manually sent mass notifications.

Sure, one could develop an app for that too, but it would be nice if one doesn't have to.

You can use Amazon SES with Sendy. It was for one time fee of $37 back then, not sure about the current price.
It provides simple PHP app, which has very good web UI for managing lists, templates and sending bulk emails. And you can also create multiple logins so other employees can have access to this app.

bikegremlin

@coo said:

@bikegremlin said:

@Mason said:

@skorupion said:
Amazon SES would most likely be the cheapest

Yep, $0.0001 per message. So $20 for 200k, $50 for 500k, etc.

Do you know how tricky it is to configure and work with?
Compared to the other "out-of-the-box" solutions like ZeptoMail?

EDIT:
I forgot to note this:
I'd like for the business employees to be able to send an email to a pre-defined list, and be allowed to edit the from email (keeping the same domain, but different account).
That's for the manually sent mass notifications.

Sure, one could develop an app for that too, but it would be nice if one doesn't have to.

You can use Amazon SES with Sendy. It was for one time fee of $37 back then, not sure about the current price.
It provides simple PHP app, which has very good web UI for managing lists, templates and sending bulk emails. And you can also create multiple logins so other employees can have access to this app.

This one?
https://sendy.co/

(naughty 69 dollars now )

coo

@bikegremlin said:

@coo said:

@bikegremlin said:

@Mason said:

@skorupion said:
Amazon SES would most likely be the cheapest

Yep, $0.0001 per message. So $20 for 200k, $50 for 500k, etc.

Do you know how tricky it is to configure and work with?
Compared to the other "out-of-the-box" solutions like ZeptoMail?

EDIT:
I forgot to note this:
I'd like for the business employees to be able to send an email to a pre-defined list, and be allowed to edit the from email (keeping the same domain, but different account).
That's for the manually sent mass notifications.

Sure, one could develop an app for that too, but it would be nice if one doesn't have to.

You can use Amazon SES with Sendy. It was for one time fee of $37 back then, not sure about the current price.
It provides simple PHP app, which has very good web UI for managing lists, templates and sending bulk emails. And you can also create multiple logins so other employees can have access to this app.

This one?
https://sendy.co/

Yeah, that's the one! It uses your SES account for sending mails, you just need to add your AWS keys.

image_host

sendy.co is the way to go if you plan to use SES.

skorupion

@bikegremlin said:

@Mason said:

@skorupion said:
Amazon SES would most likely be the cheapest

Yep, $0.0001 per message. So $20 for 200k, $50 for 500k, etc.

Do you know how tricky it is to configure and work with?
Compared to the other "out-of-the-box" solutions like ZeptoMail?

EDIT:
I forgot to note this:
I'd like for the business employees to be able to send an email to a pre-defined list, and be allowed to edit the from email (keeping the same domain, but different account).
That's for the manually sent mass notifications.

Sure, one could develop an app for that too, but it would be nice if one doesn't have to.

AWS SES gives you SMTP credentials also, so if you have a system you can just hook it up via SMTP

bikegremlin

@skorupion said:

@bikegremlin said:

@Mason said:

@skorupion said:
Amazon SES would most likely be the cheapest

Yep, $0.0001 per message. So $20 for 200k, $50 for 500k, etc.

Do you know how tricky it is to configure and work with?
Compared to the other "out-of-the-box" solutions like ZeptoMail?

EDIT:
I forgot to note this:
I'd like for the business employees to be able to send an email to a pre-defined list, and be allowed to edit the from email (keeping the same domain, but different account).
That's for the manually sent mass notifications.

Sure, one could develop an app for that too, but it would be nice if one doesn't have to.

AWS SES gives you SMTP credentials also, so if you have a system you can just hook it up via SMTP

APi integration is also possible?
(yes, I know, asking instead of 1 minute of Googling, but prefer to have it confirmed by someone who knows)

skorupion

@bikegremlin said:

@skorupion said:

@bikegremlin said:

@Mason said:

@skorupion said:
Amazon SES would most likely be the cheapest

Yep, $0.0001 per message. So $20 for 200k, $50 for 500k, etc.

Do you know how tricky it is to configure and work with?
Compared to the other "out-of-the-box" solutions like ZeptoMail?

EDIT:
I forgot to note this:
I'd like for the business employees to be able to send an email to a pre-defined list, and be allowed to edit the from email (keeping the same domain, but different account).
That's for the manually sent mass notifications.

Sure, one could develop an app for that too, but it would be nice if one doesn't have to.

AWS SES gives you SMTP credentials also, so if you have a system you can just hook it up via SMTP

APi integration is also possible?
(yes, I know, asking instead of 1 minute of Googling, but prefer to have it confirmed by someone who knows)

What kind of API do you mean? But most likely yes.

bikegremlin

@skorupion said:

@bikegremlin said:

@skorupion said:

@bikegremlin said:

@Mason said:

@skorupion said:
Amazon SES would most likely be the cheapest

Yep, $0.0001 per message. So $20 for 200k, $50 for 500k, etc.

Do you know how tricky it is to configure and work with?
Compared to the other "out-of-the-box" solutions like ZeptoMail?

EDIT:
I forgot to note this:
I'd like for the business employees to be able to send an email to a pre-defined list, and be allowed to edit the from email (keeping the same domain, but different account).
That's for the manually sent mass notifications.

Sure, one could develop an app for that too, but it would be nice if one doesn't have to.

AWS SES gives you SMTP credentials also, so if you have a system you can just hook it up via SMTP

APi integration is also possible?
(yes, I know, asking instead of 1 minute of Googling, but prefer to have it confirmed by someone who knows)

What kind of API do you mean? But most likely yes.

Have an application run through the list of (tens of) thousands email addresses (user accounts that is, with their emails).
Create and send to the service for emailing:

• Late payment reminders.
• Service reschedule notifications to anyone affected.
• Meeting schedules.

And so on and so forth.

2nd use:
Have an employee write a letter/notification.
Choose a pre-created mailing list from an application's list.
Edit the reply-to address (using the same domain, but a different email, or a gmail adress on some occasions).
Hit send and have the email sent to everyone in the list.

skorupion

If youve got an app like that, then yes, but from what I know amazon SES just gives u simplest of simple shits, so use sendy

bikegremlin

@skorupion said:
If youve got an app like that, then yes, but from what I know amazon SES just gives u simplest of simple shits, so use sendy

Yup - if I understood correctly, Sendy + Amazon SES should get the job done.

Don't really mind (the client) paying more, but so far I mostly got ghosted when enquiring mail service providers about this.
It probably smells like SPAM for miles away. Can't really blame them.

EDIT:
The current solution requires the application to "worry" about sending 500 emails at a time, every hour.
I'd very much prefer to just send a list of tens of thousands and have the mail service worry about distributing them over the next hours/days.

skorupion

@bikegremlin said:

@skorupion said:
If youve got an app like that, then yes, but from what I know amazon SES just gives u simplest of simple shits, so use sendy

Yup - if I understood correctly, Sendy + Amazon SES should get the job done.

Don't really mind (the client) paying more, but so far I mostly got ghosted when enquiring mail service providers about this.
It probably smells like SPAM for miles away. Can't really blame them.

Welp SES is operated by AWS which you may know how it is

bikegremlin

@skorupion said:

@bikegremlin said:

@skorupion said:
If youve got an app like that, then yes, but from what I know amazon SES just gives u simplest of simple shits, so use sendy

Yup - if I understood correctly, Sendy + Amazon SES should get the job done.

Don't really mind (the client) paying more, but so far I mostly got ghosted when enquiring mail service providers about this.
It probably smells like SPAM for miles away. Can't really blame them.

Welp SES is operated by AWS which you may know how it is

Not much experience with them (apart from being Amazon affiliate associate - that experience sucks from the customer support perspective).

On the positive side: it's a challenge. It's interesting.

skorupion

@bikegremlin said:

@skorupion said:

@bikegremlin said:

@skorupion said:
If youve got an app like that, then yes, but from what I know amazon SES just gives u simplest of simple shits, so use sendy

Yup - if I understood correctly, Sendy + Amazon SES should get the job done.

Don't really mind (the client) paying more, but so far I mostly got ghosted when enquiring mail service providers about this.
It probably smells like SPAM for miles away. Can't really blame them.

Welp SES is operated by AWS which you may know how it is

Not much experience with them (apart from being Amazon affiliate associate - that experience sucks from the customer support perspective).

On the positive side: it's a challenge. It's interesting.

AWS not Amazon

hornet

@skorupion said:
If youve got an app like that, then yes, but from what I know amazon SES just gives u simplest of simple shits, so use sendy

"simplest of simple shits"
Never heard that before. I love it.

Also, +1 vote for sendy.

Kalipus

https://elasticemail.com/email-api-pricing

tjn

Sendy + SES is great.

I've never tried it but EmailOctopus has a version that allows you to use your own SES account.
https://emailoctopus.com/pricing-connect

Nyr

SendGrid is crap: bad deliverability, bad support, has been on autopilot for years. Avoid them or you will be disappointed sooner than later.

SES is cheap and ok, the best option if budget is limited.

With your sending volume, a dedicated IP is not absolutely required, and would not be a good fit if the outbound volume is condensed within a few specific campaigns every month. If sending volume is steady during the month, then it can be a good idea.

Audiojunkie

I would look into mail.baby, its done by interserve and best competitive priced email service i can find.

Razza

@Nyr said: SendGrid is crap: bad deliverability, bad support, has been on autopilot for years.

They were ok quite a number of years back, the last few years they are totally crap if I remember correctly back 2020 most of their sending ip rep got majorly trashed i believe quite a number of users account compromised probably used the same password for everything resulting in a flood of outgoing spam.

PureVoltage

@Razza said:

@Nyr said: SendGrid is crap: bad deliverability, bad support, has been on autopilot for years.

They were ok quite a number of years back, the last few years they are totally crap if I remember correctly back 2020 most of their sending ip rep got majorly trashed i believe quite a number of users account compromised probably used the same password for everything resulting in a flood of outgoing spam.

Think it was even quite a bit before that time. I forget when we stopped using them but it was a nice change. We had customers constantly not getting emails from us.
SES is quite good if you take the time to setup everything.

For this amount of sending you would be best setting up your own system using a few sources if possible. Sendy would be a great setup option. However, it really depends on how much of that mail is spam. Most likely it would be a better option to setup a few different sending domains and sites using it so that if one gets blocked your others are not trashed. Nothing worse than sending emails and having everything dropped. Not all your eggs in one basket?

bikegremlin

@PureVoltage said:

@Razza said:

@Nyr said: SendGrid is crap: bad deliverability, bad support, has been on autopilot for years.

They were ok quite a number of years back, the last few years they are totally crap if I remember correctly back 2020 most of their sending ip rep got majorly trashed i believe quite a number of users account compromised probably used the same password for everything resulting in a flood of outgoing spam.

Think it was even quite a bit before that time. I forget when we stopped using them but it was a nice change. We had customers constantly not getting emails from us.
SES is quite good if you take the time to setup everything.

For this amount of sending you would be best setting up your own system using a few sources if possible. Sendy would be a great setup option. However, it really depends on how much of that mail is spam. Most likely it would be a better option to setup a few different sending domains and sites using it so that if one gets blocked your others are not trashed. Nothing worse than sending emails and having everything dropped. Not all your eggs in one basket?

Zero spam.
No email marketing.
Only paxing customer notifications.

chris

Sendgrid we had the same issue, they advised a dedicated ip.... They provided us one already blacklisted..... And told me I'd have to speak to the places where it was blacklisted (15 mins after the IP was provided) to change that 😆

Needless to say, we no longer use them! We use zoho for transactional mail and are currently setting up our own mail servers due to having a lot of services and long - standing clients we trust we can offset our costs and send the majority ourselves

tjn

I came accross this mailing list manager today, thought you might find it interesting - open source and free!
https://listmonk.app/

PureVoltage

@bikegremlin said:

@PureVoltage said:

@Razza said:

@Nyr said: SendGrid is crap: bad deliverability, bad support, has been on autopilot for years.

They were ok quite a number of years back, the last few years they are totally crap if I remember correctly back 2020 most of their sending ip rep got majorly trashed i believe quite a number of users account compromised probably used the same password for everything resulting in a flood of outgoing spam.

Think it was even quite a bit before that time. I forget when we stopped using them but it was a nice change. We had customers constantly not getting emails from us.
SES is quite good if you take the time to setup everything.

For this amount of sending you would be best setting up your own system using a few sources if possible. Sendy would be a great setup option. However, it really depends on how much of that mail is spam. Most likely it would be a better option to setup a few different sending domains and sites using it so that if one gets blocked your others are not trashed. Nothing worse than sending emails and having everything dropped. Not all your eggs in one basket?

Zero spam.
No email marketing.
Only paxing customer notifications.

No spam then just setup sendy and use SES.
Best delivery we have seen out of everyone we have used over the years.