[HN Gopher] Sinch to acquire Mailgun
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Sinch to acquire Mailgun
Author : lox
Score : 139 points
Date : 2021-09-30 10:15 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.mailgun.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.mailgun.com)
| blueatlas wrote:
| I recently switched over to MailerSend for all of our
| transactional e-mail. It's drop-dead simple to setup a new
| domain, and you can manage multiple domains under one account.
| Their domain validation is rock solid and IP address pool is
| clean and not blacklisted. Logging and analytics could use some
| feature upgrades, but it's not bad. Support has been excellent. I
| have no connection to MailerSend other than being a relatively
| new customer.
|
| https://www.mailersend.com/
| abdusco wrote:
| Wow, I've been looking for a Mailgun replacement for a long
| time. I was using it to receive emails at @mydomain.com and
| forward them to my primary email. Then they started charging
| for inbound routes, and I couldn't justify the price for <200
| emails a month. So I switched back to my registrar's free email
| forwarding, and had to give up API support.
|
| MailerSend seems to be a great alternative.
| fosron wrote:
| Thanks for your kind words! I'm a lead developer over at
| MailerSend and every happy customer is a driving force to make
| our product better!
| system2 wrote:
| Minimum $25 per month is not a good deal for many customers
| like me. Sometimes clients send $9-15 per month emails from
| their sites, sometimes $50 worth (with mailgun). I don't want
| to pay a fixed price like $25 when I may only use 1/5 of it.
| jacobobryant wrote:
| I love that the pricing page is simple instead of having
| multiple paid tiers each with their own pricing scale for #
| of monthly emails. I'm currently doing 100k/month with
| Mailgun, and while saving money on sending isn't much of a
| priority at the moment, I'll definitely look into this more
| down the road. Maybe try it out for a side project in the
| mean time.
|
| I'm sort of surprised I haven't noticed this before when
| researching email providers.
| orliesaurus wrote:
| I remember talking to some folks from Sinch in 2014, i always
| laughed because I thought they were just Twilio copycats...well
| now they have acquired two companies I worked at. Impressive. I
| guess they're the ones laughing now!
| corobo wrote:
| What is it that keeps Mailgun being passed from company to
| company like a hot potato?
|
| Feel like I've had "oh here we go, incredible journey that needs
| me to reconfigure everything" a few times now
|
| e: in fairness to Mailgun the most recent one I was thinking of
| (Pathwire) was a branding thing not a purchase
| yetanother-1 wrote:
| I woild say different expectations from each acquisition, less
| profit and more overhead.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Trying to squeeze profits out of what should be a non profit
| (like Let's Encrypt, Quad 9, etc).
| Hamuko wrote:
| Yeah, the first thing that I thought when I opened the blog
| post and saw "Mailgun by Pathwire" was "wait, I thought this
| was Mailgun by Rackspace".
|
| Apparently I'm way behind on the Mailgun ownership saga.
| laurent92 wrote:
| I'm afraid how much sensitive information transits through
| email services. Notably, all credentials to access accounts,
| and possible viruses. Maybe, after the buyer takes ownership,
| they realize the immense liability it is, and decide to get rid
| of it.
| jaywalk wrote:
| > all credentials to access accounts
|
| What?
| cldellow wrote:
| Proof of ownership of an email address is often used to
| prove ownership of an account on a third-party site.
|
| Common examples are "forget password" workflows and
| Spotify/Slack's magic login link workflows.
|
| If you own the transactional mail service through which all
| these flow, you are now responsible for the security of a
| large chunk of the Internet.
| tootie wrote:
| Well, it seems the actual deal is that Sinch is acquiring
| Pathwire. Mailgun is their biggest brand, but they also own
| Mailjet and Email on Acid.
| gh123man wrote:
| Ive been using mailgun since before they restricted the free tier
| to forward emails from my personal domain to my gmail (and
| respond to them with SMTP creds via gmail).
|
| Thankfully my wildcard routes have been grandfathered when the
| change happened but I feel that my days are numbered on their
| service. Since I send/receive <100 emails/month, $35 is far too
| much for my simple use case.
|
| Can anyone recommend a pay as you go, or a cheaper mail routing
| service that I can use this way?
| KyleJune wrote:
| I have catch all emails for 2 of my domain and wildcard
| subdomains for them all go to one inbox using fastmail. I have
| it sync emails from my gmail to fastmail so that I can continue
| to get mail to my old address. It's just $5/month, I'm pretty
| happy with it.
| czardoz wrote:
| I've moved to Zoho mail. It's $1/month for a single user, which
| seems to be well worth it. The catch is, it's not possible to
| _send_ from Zoho without creating additional users (which has a
| cost).
| moogly wrote:
| I also am a happy paying Fastmail customer w/ a custom domain,
| but perhaps you could look into Cloudflare Email Routing[1]
| that was announced just a few days ago? It's in private beta.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28670125
| pipnonsense wrote:
| I hope their customer support continues to be good.
|
| I had a hit on HN with a side-project last year [0]. It delivers
| public domain books in chapters to your email. So I was needing
| to send over 1,000 emails a day from day one basically.
|
| I initially used SendGrid for my project, but SendGrid's free
| trial had a limit of 100 emails a day. Well, I just needed to
| upgrade, right? Wrong. Sendgrid had a rule where it was
| impossible to upgrade from the free trial until the trial period
| was over. So 90% of my emails were not being delivered because I
| wasn't in a paid plan and I couldn't upgrade to a paid plan.
|
| The worst part is that it wasn't very straightforward to
| understand I was in that catch 22. It took me about 4 or 5 days
| of sending their customer support messages and them taking too
| long to reply and not being very clear in their replies to
| understand the whole issue. And even proving that my traffic was
| legit (the HN post was enough evidence that I was not sending
| spam I think) was not enough for them to allow me to upgrade.
|
| So I immediately changed to MailGun. They had similar worries
| about a new account with significant email traffic, but I sent an
| email to customer support right after signing up, they replied in
| an hour or so already allowing me to upgrade. Never had an issue
| with MailGun and I am very happy with their tech and service.
|
| I am now creating a business on top of email delivery and staying
| with them. Hope this acquisition doesn't change much in that
| front.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24307752
| samdung wrote:
| Have you tried https://sendwithses.com or https://sendy.co/ ?
| kehers wrote:
| It's not the same as what Mailgun does. Mailgun lets you send
| emails programmatically. Sendy/Sendwithses lets you send
| campaigns from an interface (using your SES).
| pipnonsense wrote:
| I changed at the time to Mailgun and I am happy there, so not
| looking into other options for now.
|
| But at the time I look at those and preferred a solution with
| less upfront configuration required and less things to manage
| in general. It was a side-project that required a very quick
| solution. Mailgun was perfect for this.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| > I initially used SendGrid for my project, but SendGrid's free
| trial had a limit of 100 emails a day. Well, I just needed to
| upgrade, right? Wrong. Sendgrid had a rule where it was
| impossible to upgrade from the free trial until the trial
| period was over. So 90% of my emails were not being delivered
| because I wasn't in a paid plan and I couldn't upgrade to a
| paid plan.
|
| I feel like there's a business lesson in there somewhere, but
| can't quite put my finger on it.
| statictype wrote:
| "Never get in the way of someone wanting to give you money"
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| SendGrid was still right imo, and I hate shitty customer
| service. What they could've done better is explain that $$$
| for sending @1000 emails/day isn't worth sidestepping
| procedures which are wholly designed to stop spammers that
| can have %% impact on bottom line by degrading email IP
| reputations.
|
| Sorry for the winded explanation. I think the gist is
| there.
| twodollars wrote:
| Sendgrid took the time to go back and forth and ended up
| doing nothing. Why not spend that time vetting the
| legitimacy of the emails?
| pipnonsense wrote:
| That's my biggest issue.
|
| One day at the front page of HN of a single page where
| the only thing you can do is sign up to receive emails is
| enough to justify 1,000 emails a day IMO. Without knowing
| anything else, I think the customer support person that
| took the time to reply me a few times to explain the
| issue, could have made the decision that likelihood of my
| service being spam is ~0%.
|
| edit: that's exactly what they did at Mailgun btw. The
| first reply came with a _" I'll need to check with other
| team"_. Hours later, without any followup from me, came
| the second reply with _" Thanks for providing the
| information. We have removed the limitations to your
| account."_ (copied pasted). Excellent execution in both
| getting the account and keeping the risk of delivering
| spam through their service very low. Compare this to
| Sendgrid, with three or four cryptic replies, and a lost
| account.
|
| Check Amplitude's CEO HN thread about what drove the
| success of the company to the IPO. Among other things,
| making it easy/free for small companies to use Amplitude,
| even though their sole business model was to aim at big
| corporate accounts. For a few small companies that would
| turn into big corporate accounts or that were acquired by
| big corporations that would then adopt Amplitude and
| become big corporate accounts.
|
| I think it would make strategic sense for SendGrid to
| greenlight my account. It was not a sensible, necessary
| anti-spam policy IMO, it was just poor execution.
| Twirrim wrote:
| It never ceases to be amazing how often I have to bite my
| tongue and not say that during meetings.
|
| Someone wants to give us money, for our product, at a price
| that will make us a profit. Let them.
| munk-a wrote:
| Every once in a while that profit will come at a large
| opportunity cost - so you can't commit freely to every
| such offering... but yea if you find yourself frequently
| turning down opportunities like this then you need to
| examine why your business direction doesn't seem to match
| customer needs.
| EleanorKonik wrote:
| Ghost just won't let users upgrade from a complimentary plan
| right now and it's _maddening_ because I had to comp a bunch
| of people who would probably be happy to pay me if it wasn't
| a hassle, because of a billing error.
|
| I wish more businesses knew this lesson :(
| crocodiletears wrote:
| I just created an account on mailgun the other day for a project
| I'm working on. In case they go downhill, what are the best
| alternatives?
| abdusco wrote:
| See this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28705793
| 1cvmask wrote:
| Seems like they are following the Twilio playbook.
| brightball wrote:
| Yea. I wasn't familiar with Sinch but it does sound like they
| are a Twilio competitor.
| moogly wrote:
| I haven't heard of them either, but this is apparently the
| third company they've acquired for more than a billion
| dollars this year. The others were Inteliquent for $1.1B in
| February and MessageMedia in June for $1.3B.
|
| https://investors.sinch.com/acquisitions
| fasteo wrote:
| I am a customer of both Sinch (actually mblox and mobile 365) and
| mailgun. Let's see how things works in the day to day operations.
|
| More financials details here [1]
|
| _Using yesterday's closing Sinch share price of SEK 165.9, and
| USD /SEK exchange rate of 8.8, this corresponds to an enterprise
| value of approximately USD 1.9 billion, or SEK 16.6 billion._
|
| _In the twelve months ending December 31, 2021, Pathwire is
| expected to record revenues of USD 132 million, Gross Profit of
| USD 104 million, and Adjusted EBITDA of USD 55 million. This
| corresponds to a gross margin of 79 percent and an adjusted
| EBITDA margin of 42 percent. The business employs around 290
| people and is headquartered in San Antonio, Texas._
|
| If my math is right, they are paying x34 EBITDA, x14 ARR, huge
| multipliers if you ask me.
|
| Too much cash in the system I guess.
|
| [1] https://investors.sinch.com/news-releases/news-release-
| detai...
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| I send everything from Mailgun to quarantine due to all of the
| spam and phishing. How do folks that run email services sleep at
| night?
| etaioinshrdlu wrote:
| That's funny, I always thought they were the authoritarian
| email choice, they technically don't even allow sending
| marketing.
|
| Do they just not police their service well?
| nkotov wrote:
| I know someone in the "unsolicited" business, their answer is
| literally, "money". The money that could be made in the
| industry is insane. Last year, they did $50m.
| parasdahal wrote:
| Mailgun has the worst customer service I have ever come across,
| hope this might help them get back on track.
| shafyy wrote:
| If you're looking for no-fringe transactional email sender that
| are going down the bootstrapped indie route, I can recommend
| https://ohmysmtp.com
|
| I have no connection to them except being a happy customer.
| albertgoeswoof wrote:
| Thanks for the recommendation! I'm the founder of OhMySMTP,
| happy to answer any questions here or over our support email.
| edoceo wrote:
| How much work is it, really, to keep IPs "clean" from Spam
| filters? Or is domain rank more important?
| albertgoeswoof wrote:
| The main method is to stop spam being sent from your IPs in
| the fist place. We have a number of mechanisms:
|
| - Automated outgoing spam filters (via rspamd) to prevent
| obvious spam emails
|
| - Enforced DKIM validation on all accounts
|
| - Automated / manual review of sudden outgoing email spikes
|
| - Automated bounce response management
|
| - Automatic block lists for any emails that hard bounce
|
| - No free plan
|
| - Manual review of new accounts
|
| Additionally behaving as a legit sender helps, so things
| like greylisting, the right encryption support, rDNS
| records etc all need to be in place.
|
| We also monitor the public block lists and take action if
| our IPs are mistakenly added to them
| edoceo wrote:
| Woah, can you actually get a response from SpamHaus?
| jorams wrote:
| Just a heads up: If scripts from cdn.paddle.com fail to load
| your pricing page is currently very confusing, with no real
| indication that anything is going wrong: The "Solo" plan
| shows as $40 per month, while the "Scaling" plan starts at
| $10 per month. In other words, Solo looks 4 times as
| expensive for 10% of the emails. I spent some time trying to
| find other differences, but it's just wrong.
|
| Maybe default to showing something like $-- instead, as a
| clear indicator that prices have not loaded.
| albertgoeswoof wrote:
| Thanks! We'll rework this so it can work without paddle.
| sleepyhead wrote:
| Are your servers in the EU? I'm currently using Postmark but
| looking for alternatives to avoid US data transfer.
| albertgoeswoof wrote:
| Currently everything is UK based- but we have been asked
| for an EU version quite a few times now. It's in the
| pipeline.
| shafyy wrote:
| Keep up the great work!
| patrickbolle wrote:
| How many emails do you send with them? I send > 200k and
| interested to know what their pricing turns into in the
| 'Enterprise' plan.
|
| Thanks for the link though, good to see other people in the
| space (currently using Mailgun)
| shafyy wrote:
| Not that many. I'm on their lowest plan. Sorry that I can't
| be of further help.
| svdr wrote:
| Mailjet has been acquired as well:
| https://www.mailjet.com/blog/news/sinch-to-acquire-pathwire/
| programmarchy wrote:
| Sounds like Pathwire had previously acquired both Mailgun and
| Mailjet (and "Email on Acid", which I hadn't heard of until
| today), then Sinch acquired Pathwire. So lots of consolidation
| happening.
|
| I'd be curious to know how much of the marketshare they own
| now. Other players I know of are SendGrid, MailChimp, and
| Mandrill.
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(page generated 2021-09-30 23:02 UTC)