Mail for Good(github.com)
github.com
Mail for Good
https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/mail-for-good/tree/heroku/stable
69 comments
I use Mail for Good every week to send my email blast to 3.5 million people. It works fine and is stable.
We haven't made any big changes to it recently because it hasn't broken. There is definitely some maintenance we could do as far as updating libraries.
We're hoping to re-write parts of it to use AWS Lambda instead of a Linux server, so we can further simplify use of it for less-technical users (a lot of nonprofits don't have developers on staff).
We haven't made any big changes to it recently because it hasn't broken. There is definitely some maintenance we could do as far as updating libraries.
We're hoping to re-write parts of it to use AWS Lambda instead of a Linux server, so we can further simplify use of it for less-technical users (a lot of nonprofits don't have developers on staff).
There are a decent number of branches, one of which is "fix/auth" which has commits from two months ago (but most are much older as you mention).
Not saying this necessarily means this project is alive and well, but just noting!
Not saying this necessarily means this project is alive and well, but just noting!
>We believe that a re-write of the platform is due ...
Oh oh.
Oh oh.
This looks really good, but it mentions it uses AWS Simple Email Service to actually send the emails.
I was under the impression that one of the big value adds of the more expensive email services is that, basically, they work on solving the issue of avoiding your email landing in spam, whereas if you use a more 'direct' commodity service like AWS Simple Email Service or other cloud equivalents you have to kind of solve that problem yourself which is really, really hard and hence not worth the saving.
Is that roughly true? Or do I have it wrong?
I was under the impression that one of the big value adds of the more expensive email services is that, basically, they work on solving the issue of avoiding your email landing in spam, whereas if you use a more 'direct' commodity service like AWS Simple Email Service or other cloud equivalents you have to kind of solve that problem yourself which is really, really hard and hence not worth the saving.
Is that roughly true? Or do I have it wrong?
Tangentially related to this but I felt it added to your comment - SES is great for sending emails but horrendous as far as reading received emails goes..which makes sense since SES is better suited for transactional/mass emailing.
In any case, I decided to build myself an SES email client which reads emails from S3. I'm looking for collaborators @ https://github.com/saiorama/ses-email-client/.
The idea is to make an App Store for emails. The first use case I've solved for is give users unlimited disposable emails on their own domain - like your personal Mailinator.
If you would like to try it out for your own side project, drop me a note @ https://shared-inbox.landen.co/.
In any case, I decided to build myself an SES email client which reads emails from S3. I'm looking for collaborators @ https://github.com/saiorama/ses-email-client/.
The idea is to make an App Store for emails. The first use case I've solved for is give users unlimited disposable emails on their own domain - like your personal Mailinator.
If you would like to try it out for your own side project, drop me a note @ https://shared-inbox.landen.co/.
Yes, that's true. For example, handling soft bounces correctly. That's when SMTP doesn't give an error, but you later get an email indicating a delivery failure. At large volumes, you really need to handle those emails correctly to stay off of blacklists.
Similar, you should have caps on the number of simultaneous outbound SMTP connections to the same domain. And things like knowing which failures are temporary, which are permanent, and when to automatically unsubscribe an email. (after X temp failures over X time period, etc).
Similar, you should have caps on the number of simultaneous outbound SMTP connections to the same domain. And things like knowing which failures are temporary, which are permanent, and when to automatically unsubscribe an email. (after X temp failures over X time period, etc).
Not being routed to Spam is largely a two-step process, which is of moderate complexity in SES, but if you're browsing GitHub you can probably handle it:
* Setting up DKIM and SPF - Amazon makes this relatively painless, particularly if you're managing DNS in Route53
* Not spamming
* Setting up DKIM and SPF - Amazon makes this relatively painless, particularly if you're managing DNS in Route53
* Not spamming
I think you have it backwards though. if you use a big player like AWS or Azure or GCP, you can be pretty sure your mail will get to inbox and not in the spam folder, not the other way around I think. DIY is a little harder
I think the previous comment was potentially more correct.
Typically for low volume sending it doesn't matter. For high-volume sending you need to get the IPs, domains, and security controls set up correctly to reduce how much you're seen as spam.
AWS SES will allow you to configure this all, but you need to know how. Something like SendGrid (not a small player) will be more expensive, but will provide usability features on top and guide you through that setup of that solid foundation a little more.
Ultimately the reputation comes down to the organisation authoring the email (not the email service provider), as they are the ones doing well or badly on the quality of the email they send.
Typically for low volume sending it doesn't matter. For high-volume sending you need to get the IPs, domains, and security controls set up correctly to reduce how much you're seen as spam.
AWS SES will allow you to configure this all, but you need to know how. Something like SendGrid (not a small player) will be more expensive, but will provide usability features on top and guide you through that setup of that solid foundation a little more.
Ultimately the reputation comes down to the organisation authoring the email (not the email service provider), as they are the ones doing well or badly on the quality of the email they send.
Not true. Inbox placement requires vigilance and monitoring of every user on your IP. AWS is so mixed that is an intractable problem.
You can "bring your own IP" or lease a dedicated IP address for $25/month. I'm not sure how effective it is, but the option is there.
If you're sending a lot of email every day, having dedicated IPs is an important piece of owning your sender reputation. A shared IP is only as good as the email service provider's ability to prevent people from sending spam on their platform. In a system full of black boxes that can have sudden and hard to fix impacts on your business if you rely a lot on email, eliminating one black box (the behavior of other customers on your shared IP) can be a huge risk reduction.
In the past our domain was blocked by one of the top free email providers - we sent about 1 email per day at the time - because we sent email from an IP owned by a hosting provider who also owned another IP that in the past had sent spam. That was the reason given. Whitelisting and adding as a contact didn't allow us to even receive emails from ourselves, to our own email address (over a decade old at the time) with that provider. Our _domain_ has never had spam sent from it, never appeared in a blacklist, and the IP address itself was clean.
So yes, own the IP [and do all the regular SPF, DKIM and such], but be aware that is possibly nowhere near enough.
So yes, own the IP [and do all the regular SPF, DKIM and such], but be aware that is possibly nowhere near enough.
[deleted]
> An app for sending millions of emails as cheaply as possible. Mail for Good uses AWS Simple Email Service to send bulk emails at $0.10 per 1000 emails.
> Mail for Good is fast and memory efficient, currently sending over 100 emails per second on a 1gb Digital Ocean VPS.
> We've used Mail for Good to deliver newsletters to hundreds of thousands of campers per week.
... Good? YMMV, but personally, I'm not a fan of spam. Never will be.
> Mail for Good is fast and memory efficient, currently sending over 100 emails per second on a 1gb Digital Ocean VPS.
> We've used Mail for Good to deliver newsletters to hundreds of thousands of campers per week.
... Good? YMMV, but personally, I'm not a fan of spam. Never will be.
>> deliver newsletters to hundreds of thousands of campers per week
> I'm not a fan of spam. Never will be
This isn't spam. It's a newsletter subscription people opt into by joining their website as a user. Users can opt-out of this specific newsletter in their FreeCodeCamp settings page and be fine and dandy afterwards.
Spam is something else entirely.
> I'm not a fan of spam. Never will be
This isn't spam. It's a newsletter subscription people opt into by joining their website as a user. Users can opt-out of this specific newsletter in their FreeCodeCamp settings page and be fine and dandy afterwards.
Spam is something else entirely.
Plug: If anyone is looking for a way to use RSS for their newsletters instead of getting it in their inbox, see http://myrss.email/
Ah! I love it when I hope something exists then find it does.
I've received a lot of newsletters that I never asked to receive. It can be both.
ddevault(1)
Newsletters are the modern spam. "Spam" as we used to know it is actually a solved problem nowadays on major e-mail providers with good spam filters.
Regarding newsletters, the majority of those are opt-out (as opposed to opt-in) and the opt-out process is intentionally convoluted ("untick this checkbox if you would prefer not to subscribe to our newsletter"), so as far as I'm concerned it's indeed spam.
Regarding newsletters, the majority of those are opt-out (as opposed to opt-in) and the opt-out process is intentionally convoluted ("untick this checkbox if you would prefer not to subscribe to our newsletter"), so as far as I'm concerned it's indeed spam.
Since we're talking specifically about the FreeCodeCamp newsletter, may I point you out to their privacy terms you agree to when you sign up (this is essentially a clickwrap, or "take it or leave it" contract):
https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/privacy-policy/
> We'll ask you for your email address so you can use it to sign into freeCodeCamp, and so we can send you announcements and helpful programming-related links.
Essentially, this is an "opt-in" process because you are opting to create your account and you agree with the site policies.
Granted, I'm in no way a legal professional and I could be wrong about everything I said here. Corrections are welcome.
https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/privacy-policy/
> We'll ask you for your email address so you can use it to sign into freeCodeCamp, and so we can send you announcements and helpful programming-related links.
Essentially, this is an "opt-in" process because you are opting to create your account and you agree with the site policies.
Granted, I'm in no way a legal professional and I could be wrong about everything I said here. Corrections are welcome.
This is the kind of thing I'm talking about.
A FreeCodeCamp account presumably offers more functionality beyond just the newsletter, and the majority of people would sign up for that functionality and not the newsletter.
Yet, there is no way to opt-out directly, and you have to go through extra steps to do so after the fact.
This is also in breach of the GDPR which mandates that consent for non-essential data processing (marketing communications fall into that) should be opt-in (so pre-ticked checkboxes are already forbidden) and freely given (so there is no penalty for declining, you can’t refuse to open an account for them if they decline consent).
A FreeCodeCamp account presumably offers more functionality beyond just the newsletter, and the majority of people would sign up for that functionality and not the newsletter.
Yet, there is no way to opt-out directly, and you have to go through extra steps to do so after the fact.
This is also in breach of the GDPR which mandates that consent for non-essential data processing (marketing communications fall into that) should be opt-in (so pre-ticked checkboxes are already forbidden) and freely given (so there is no penalty for declining, you can’t refuse to open an account for them if they decline consent).
and it needs to be asked for seperately, i think you're right that this is in breach
It's not even just newsletters though. Every legitimate service (even Mozilla!) will spam you repeatedly with stuff irrelevant to why you gave them your email in the first place.
I run a paid service that attempts to deal with exactly this problem - a key feature being to never think twice about giving out an email address.
I recently implemented "one touch" blocking to minimize friction in the process: https://kopi-cloud.atlassian.net/wiki/x/IoCvKg
I run a paid service that attempts to deal with exactly this problem - a key feature being to never think twice about giving out an email address.
I recently implemented "one touch" blocking to minimize friction in the process: https://kopi-cloud.atlassian.net/wiki/x/IoCvKg
I don't agree much with this assessment.
I voluntarily subscribed some of the Cooper Press weekly newsletters https://cooperpress.com/publications/ They are definitely opt-in, not spam.
I regularly unsubscribe newsletters I didn't opt-in, usually from unknown sources. Not many of them lately and the opt-out usually works. I remember a couple of times I had to send an email with a mention of GDPR in it. It worked.
So "the majority" of newsletters are modern spam, not really.
I voluntarily subscribed some of the Cooper Press weekly newsletters https://cooperpress.com/publications/ They are definitely opt-in, not spam.
I regularly unsubscribe newsletters I didn't opt-in, usually from unknown sources. Not many of them lately and the opt-out usually works. I remember a couple of times I had to send an email with a mention of GDPR in it. It worked.
So "the majority" of newsletters are modern spam, not really.
I based my comment on what I see daily from non-technical people's inboxes. They are packed with mountains of various commercial newsletters and typically will get one or more of those per day.
There is definitely a minority out there like yourself that knows how to manage it and only subscribes to a few select newsletters, for I think for the majority of people, newsletters are a net negative otherwise you wouldn't see people with thousands of unread emails and there wouldn't be so much hype around tools like Hey.
There is definitely a minority out there like yourself that knows how to manage it and only subscribes to a few select newsletters, for I think for the majority of people, newsletters are a net negative otherwise you wouldn't see people with thousands of unread emails and there wouldn't be so much hype around tools like Hey.
BTW, the Cooper Press version for serverless is terrific. Among the best newsletters I subscribe to.
I agree, I don't understand the naming here.
When clicking the link I thought this was going to be another way to approach emails which better respects... something.
This was quite disapointing.
This was quite disapointing.
>I don't understand the naming here.
You mean "Mail for Good"? I think it's because they are focusing on non-profits.
You mean "Mail for Good"? I think it's because they are focusing on non-profits.
Not every bulk email is spam. Look at your inbox, I bet there are at least some newsletters, transactional mails or mailing lists in there that you signed up for.
There are zero newsletters, large-scale transactional emails or mailing lists in my inbox. Are you suggesting that I am missing out on something awesome, or maybe that's how e-mail should've been in the first place before the marketing industry laid its slimy hands on it?
I've contacted PayPal asking to be unsubscribed from having a monthly email about my zero account balance with them. They said they couldn't unsubscribe me.
I don't have any details other than 1 credit card with them... So I'll never have a "balance", so their email is spam to me.
I never signed up for correspondence from PayPal about this. That they refuse to fix it is weird.
I get exactly zero bulk email in my inbox... Except for this PayPal nonsense.
I don't have any details other than 1 credit card with them... So I'll never have a "balance", so their email is spam to me.
I never signed up for correspondence from PayPal about this. That they refuse to fix it is weird.
I get exactly zero bulk email in my inbox... Except for this PayPal nonsense.
[deleted]
Another open source alternative: https://mailtrain.org/
I can't stand when project names contain false altruism. Especially one built to send spam emails.
Cool opinion.
Ever heard the one about the non-profit activist orgs that had to send emails to tens of thousands of people who had already opted into receiving emails and had to allocate substantial portions of their budget to sending out their donation drive emails because the system keeps breaking and different companies and government departments keep finding new ways to make things worse, requiring regular mail-outs, and there wasn't really any near-zero-conf, _actually_ cheap off-the-shelf solution for that?
It's hilarious, the punch line involves being called false altruists and spammers.
Ever heard the one about the non-profit activist orgs that had to send emails to tens of thousands of people who had already opted into receiving emails and had to allocate substantial portions of their budget to sending out their donation drive emails because the system keeps breaking and different companies and government departments keep finding new ways to make things worse, requiring regular mail-outs, and there wasn't really any near-zero-conf, _actually_ cheap off-the-shelf solution for that?
It's hilarious, the punch line involves being called false altruists and spammers.
How many of those people actually, intentionally opt-in as opposed to forgetting to uncheck a checkbox?
Out of those people that did intentionally opt-in, would they still opt-in if they knew the frequency of the e-mails?
I remember being on the receiving end of exactly the same scenario you describe - non-profit entity sending spam. I actually intentionally subscribed when signing a petition and assumed they'd e-mail once a month or so which I would've be fine with.
I was so wrong - they were sending some crap every few days, and even worse they attempted to make them look personal (sent from a real-looking name) even though it's the same garbage they email to hundreds of thousands of other suckers that assumed good faith on their part. In a handful of weeks my inbox was dominated by their spam.
Another case was for a tech-related non-profit that I donated to and explicitly unchecked any opportunity for them to spam me. Well guess what, one year later they still did. They apologized afterwards and said it was a mistake (fair enough), and yet some time later I got yet another spam campaign from them I had to unsubscribe from.
Out of those people that did intentionally opt-in, would they still opt-in if they knew the frequency of the e-mails?
I remember being on the receiving end of exactly the same scenario you describe - non-profit entity sending spam. I actually intentionally subscribed when signing a petition and assumed they'd e-mail once a month or so which I would've be fine with.
I was so wrong - they were sending some crap every few days, and even worse they attempted to make them look personal (sent from a real-looking name) even though it's the same garbage they email to hundreds of thousands of other suckers that assumed good faith on their part. In a handful of weeks my inbox was dominated by their spam.
Another case was for a tech-related non-profit that I donated to and explicitly unchecked any opportunity for them to spam me. Well guess what, one year later they still did. They apologized afterwards and said it was a mistake (fair enough), and yet some time later I got yet another spam campaign from them I had to unsubscribe from.
What the hell does "if they knew the frequency of the e-mails" even mean? As someone who opted into several of these orgs: yes, of course? I know the frequency because I get the emails: if that bothers me, I can stop funding them, or I can understand that getting more of them means the world is getting more fucked up and I should probably seriously consider stepping up my game in supporting orgs that help fight this fucked up world.
I meant knowing the frequency in advance. I expected them to be respectful and email once a month or so. If I knew they’d be sending crap every few days I wouldn’t have signed up.
How is once a month a cheap endeavour?
> In a handful of weeks my inbox was dominated by their spam.
Did you click the unsubscribe button?
Did you click the unsubscribe button?
There's not a cheap off the shelf solution because most companies offering comparable mass-email services spend a significant amount of resources to fight spam and care about deliverability rates.
Nice to have the option available, but making this too easy can be an organizational footgun if someone doesn't know what they're doing.
Nice to have the option available, but making this too easy can be an organizational footgun if someone doesn't know what they're doing.
... making using email too easy is a footgun? When did we go from "reaching the people who want us to reach them is a good thing" to "email is spam"? If I sign up to a local, quasi-local, or even national grass roots movement, I want them to spend as little of my donation dollars on mailgun (or paying their CEO), and as much as possible on fighting injustice.
Yes making mass-emailing too easy is a footgun. It's incredibly easy to get blocked by common email providers entirely if you make a simple omission or mistake. Third party senders do a fair amount of work to ensure deliveability is maintained (because it's critical to their business). If you don't have a workflow to deal with spam reports and list management then you'll very likely be sending your emails into a void.
Spam has effectively ruined DIY mass-emailing, whether you like it or not. There are multiple other providers if you don't like mailgun.
There are a lot of ways for organizations and non-profits to save money, and I wouldn't recommend doing so with email if it's important to them.
Spam has effectively ruined DIY mass-emailing, whether you like it or not. There are multiple other providers if you don't like mailgun.
There are a lot of ways for organizations and non-profits to save money, and I wouldn't recommend doing so with email if it's important to them.
There is a lot of incorrect use of word spam in this thread. But it is technically incorrect.
Spam means unsolicited email. There is nothing about this that means you have to send unsolicited email. An people who genuinely spam wont use a tool like this, as they would prefer a network of compromised machines and email accounts to using Amazon SES.
There is a middle ground, a grey area, as others have mentioned with dark patterns to trick you into opting in for things. I am not a fan of these, but this tool isn't really for encouraging that practice.
Spam means unsolicited email. There is nothing about this that means you have to send unsolicited email. An people who genuinely spam wont use a tool like this, as they would prefer a network of compromised machines and email accounts to using Amazon SES.
There is a middle ground, a grey area, as others have mentioned with dark patterns to trick you into opting in for things. I am not a fan of these, but this tool isn't really for encouraging that practice.
An efficient spam cannon? What’s good about that?
"Email campaign management tool" = spam tool
Sorry.
Sorry.
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> $0.10 per 1000 emails
That seems to be dramatically more expensive than SendGrid, at least based on playing around with the pricing slider on their website.
Plus you're paying some other costs like bandwidth and mailing list maintenance. Most of these email providers have the idea that you can create a mailing list, and then ask them to send mailings based on some template.
That seems to be dramatically more expensive than SendGrid, at least based on playing around with the pricing slider on their website.
Plus you're paying some other costs like bandwidth and mailing list maintenance. Most of these email providers have the idea that you can create a mailing list, and then ask them to send mailings based on some template.
Are you sure? I just did the same and SendGrid's cheapest plan seems to be $15 for 50,000 emails, which is $0.30 per 1000 emails, so 3x as much.
Also, this quote seems to be based on using AWS Simple Email Service. Lower down they say:
> We're currently sending weekly email blasts of over 800,000 emails in 4 hours on a $10 per month Digital Ocean VPS with 1gb memory and 1 core processor.
Also, this quote seems to be based on using AWS Simple Email Service. Lower down they say:
> We're currently sending weekly email blasts of over 800,000 emails in 4 hours on a $10 per month Digital Ocean VPS with 1gb memory and 1 core processor.
You are correct. I had a mistake in my conversion to cents.
If you are sending millions of e-mails, it's very likely not for good.
Non-profits and startups are welcome to use my service for free.
https://forwardemail.net
https://forwardemail.net
https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/mail-for-good/commits/master
there is an issue open still about the status of the project:
https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/mail-for-good/issues/329