Changing Email Providers

[Dallas]

This morning I received an email from our provider (SparkPost) advising me that they will no longer be offering the free service that I have been using the past few years. I will have to migrate to their cheapest plan which is $30 a month and unfortunately I simply don't have the funding available for that kind of additional monthly expense right now. The implication for Fotozones is quite serious as all emails sent from the site, including notifications of responses to your posts are sent via their servers. It also affects bulk emails, ie newsletters so that I can keep members who may not visit often informed of the goings on at Fotozones. 

 

I will be looking at alternative options in the next few weeks as the current arrangement will stay in place until September. If anybody has any suggestions on an affordable SMTP service or API Fotozones could use, please get in touch with me. Our needs are not high - less than 5000 mails a month. 

[Clactonian]

That sounds very expensive Dallas. The rates I pay are below although the domain name is extra. (£9 a year if I remember correctly.) My site is built using Wordpress which comes free with a load of other stuff as part of the package.

 

 

[Dallas]

Thanks Mike, it's not the hosting fee - it's the third party SMTP service I use for Fotozones that they want $30 a month for. This is over and above normal hosting, which I pay around $60 a month for. If I try doing bulk email from my own server I'll get booted off it in no time at all. They don't allow any kind of bulk email to happen. 

 

I have tried a few other SMTP services in the past, including Elasticemail which works, but doesn't have as great deliverability as SparkPost does. I'll look at others in the weeks ahead. Bottom line is I will have to corker if I want to email the users on Fotozones.  

[Clactonian]

1 hour ago, Dallas said:

Thanks Mike, it's not the hosting fee - it's the third party SMTP service I use for Fotozones that they want $30 a month for. This is over and above normal hosting, which I pay around $60 a month for. If I try doing bulk email from my own server I'll get booted off it in no time at all. They don't allow any kind of bulk email to happen. 

 

I have tried a few other SMTP services in the past, including Elasticemail which works, but doesn't have as great deliverability as SparkPost does. I'll look at others in the weeks ahead. Bottom line is I will have to corker if I want to email the users on Fotozones.  

Have  you looked at Mad Mimi? https://madmimi.com

[Clactonian]

1 minute ago, Clactonian said:

Have  you looked at Mad Mimi? https://madmimi.com

Second thoughts ... ignore them. $42 a month for 10,000. emails.

[Dallas]

6 minutes ago, Clactonian said:

$42 a month for 10,000. emails

 

That's ridiculously pricy. SparkPost will give you 50k for the $30 they want. 

[Clactonian]

https://www.mailgun.com allows 10,000 emails a month free of charge.

[Dallas]

Yes, that's more like it! 

[Dallas]

I am going to be experimenting with Mailgun in the next few days. If you are subscribed to any threads on FZ and notice that you are not getting any email notifications please do the following: 

 

1. Check your spam folder in the email application you use. If you see it there please use your software to whitelist it. 

2. If you don't see anything in the spam folder but you know that there should have been an email in there, please report it to me, either in this thread or by direct email to info@fotozones.com. 

 

Hopefully this change won't be as fraught with problems as it was in the past. 

[Dallas]

I am just testing the new system now by subscribing to this thread using email notifications. So far I managed to get one of two email tests delivered. My Gmail account didn't deliver, but fotozones.com did. So... let's see what happens next. 

[Xploding]

Test account posting. 

[Dallas]

After some testing it would appear that Mailgun is not delivering to any addresses other than info@fotozones.com. All others are bouncing for some reason. I have asked them to investigate and explain what's going on. 

[Dallas]

Very quick support from Mailgun explained what was happening and also how I can fix it. I will attend to this (hopefully) tomorrow morning as it requires a clearer head than I can offer right now.  

[Dallas]

The tests this morning appear to have gone off well, so I will send out a news letter sometime soon and monitor the delivery rates. We had good success with SparkPost, but now with Mailgun I have set up a dedicated subdomain and DNS records specific to them so the delivery rate should be even better. Fingers crossed!