SendGrid is over, what to use instead?

[bazinga]

@sixguns Thank you for mentioning that provider. Why are you paying for it - it seems they offer a "free" plan? It that to remove their "branding" (I'm guessing here, but that's the only reason I can see based on their plans comparison).

I also presume you've configured it via "External SMTP Server" option in Cloudron?

[bazinga]

@ccfu Thank you for the suggestion. Sigh, it seems there are no free providers for personal email sending anymore - Postmark is $15/mo ;(

[bazinga]

Never heard about "transactional" emails before, but reading up a little on that now it seems that all these providers have TOS mostly for marketing campaigns plus the "transactional" emails, which are automated emails in response to some actions or stages in a customer initiated transaction with a business.

So, does using these services for "interpersonal emails" violate their TOS?

Also found this on reddit:

Keep in mind that "transactional mail" is very different from "interpersonal" mail and you need different providers for that. MailGun, SendGrid, Mandrill etc. are designed for transactional mail. They provide insight and analytics into the messages sent by doing things like intercepting clicked links, injecting tracking pixels etc. They can inject features like "unsubscribe" links into the messages. They can do things like scheduled campaigns with automated name insertion. They can detect bouncebacks and rejections from mailservers and keep track of blacklists of people or servers who shouldn't receive emails. This is good for automated messages, notification emails, newsletters, marketing campaigns etc.

These features aren't appropriate for "interpersonal" mail, and in particular you don't want to have things happen like "mail bounces for one user that one time and now it's on the automatic blacklist, and nobody in the organization can send mail to that domain anymore".

For interpersonal mail, you need an anti-spam gateway that also handles relaying outbound mail for you. E.g. Office 365's "Exchange online protection" service, Barracuda, Proofpoint, Mimecast, etc.

[sixguns]

@bazinga said in SendGrid is over, what to use instead?:

Why are you paying for it

When I started my Discourse instance I used the invite option, sent a lot of emails and maxed the free tier out, guess I should look into downgrading to save some cash now so good question

@bazinga said in SendGrid is over, what to use instead?:

"External SMTP Server" option in Cloudron

I'm not yet using Cloudron for my Discourse, only tested the free tier for Mastodon and other apps

[ccfu]

@bazinga Is there a reason you want to stick with Azure for your VPS hosting? Seems very expensive. Maybe look for an alternative that enables you to host email yourself rather than looking for an email provider you would also have to pay for.

[bazinga]

@ccfu Well, I don't pay for that hosting, so that's the main reason. I wouldn't be on Azure otherwise - way too expensive for personal Cloudron instance. Last time I've looked for a 2 cores / 8 GB RAM / 100 GB disk it wasn't that cheap anywhere reliable - like $30+ / month.

[josephcosta]

Good morning,
for clients transactional e-mail I use smtp2go.

https://www.smtp2go.com/pricing.

I also use, on a docker server, Postal wich works great and is free.

https://github.com/postalserver

[bazinga]

@josephcosta Thank you! I was actually looking at SMTP2Go and was about to open an account with them as they have a free plan which will be totally sufficient for my personal needs.

As far as Postal. What's your use case for it? Since it's a standalone self-hosted platform that needs to run on a server, how is it different from using Cloudron's built-in SMTP server?

[lucidfox]

I've been using the hosted version of plunk - https://www.useplunk.com/ - which is an open source email relay/transactional email service app built on top of AWS. They've got a generous free tier and the paid plans are very reasonable pay as you go.

[josephcosta]

@bazinga you are welcome.

The Cloudron's built.in SMTP server is great and I use it for my daily mail traffic but there is no graph and visual history of sent mails.

I use Postal as an extension of smtp2go for, at least, those reasons:

• I always prefer self-hosted open-source software when possible, particularly when there is sensistive data like mail and e-mail adresses
• I started with smtp2go to have a high delivaribility guarantee for my clients, but now my postal server is warmed enough and seems to be well accepted;
• the free plan include only five day log which is a little shorter, in postal you can set retention as needed;
• there is no preview of messages while in postal you can see plain text, html, and attachment; this is useful for tests and monitoring of sent content;
• you can create several companies and servers with different settings and credentials;
• you can track activity (open and click);
• you can give access to clients to the reports.

@lucidfox thank you for signaling useplunk.com this is quite interesting and the free plan is generous.

[josephcosta]

[bazinga]

@lucidfox Thank you for the link - I'll check it out in more detail for sure. I presume none of these providers add anything to the emails (eg. footers, ads, html tags, etc)?

[bazinga]

@josephcosta Thank for you more details. Makes sense if emails are used for customer communication and marketing. My needs are purely personal.

Actually I've discovered Cloudron back in 2018 or 2019, as a self-hosted alternative to Google Apps - so self-hosted email had been my #1 goal and still is very high on my list.

[shrey]

SMTP2GO is pretty underrated imo.
Been using their $15/month plan for the past few years, to cater to a variety of emails for a large list of subdomains/domains, without any issues. And the support's pretty decent as well!

[msbt]

@shrey how does it work with SMTP2GO? You add a single account/address as external smtp server and can still send from all email addresses via this one?

[nottheend]

It depends a bit who you are and what you are trying to achieve with it. For businesses, Mailjet might be an option. A validation of a business is required, but for very small sizes they offer a free plan.