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Comment by marcamillion | Hacker News Reader

I appreciate the fact that you guys made product decisions, but this statement was a little red-flag to me:

> For instance, a startup of 3 would not need to send 500 emails a day, that is a clear red flag.

There are many startups that do cold outreach, via cold emailing, that could do roughly 500 emails per day. I am not sure how typical this is, but as someone that has started doing sending cold emails as a direct sales tool, it seems to me that you just haven't had any customers like that yet.

If you do though, don't assume they are spammers.

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If you're sending 500 unsolicited emails a day, you're spamming. "Cold outreach" sounds very much like a nice way of saying "Spamming" to me, and I wouldn't want to share a mail server with you.

For me, the bigger red flag is the response you got - I would expect a reputable mail provider to make it abundantly clear that the behaviour you describe is not welcome on their service.

I hear you. The term 'spamming' is quite subjective.

Either way, the fact of the matter is sending cold emails is actually a powerful way to build sales -- there is a simple reason so many people do it, it works.

Like it or not, many startups do it.

So I was simply pointing this out for the OP's benefit.

There's an equally simple reason why they do it from botnets or hacked mail servers. It's illegal in many places, and its a great way to get your mail host blacklisted. There is no benefit whatsoever for OP to allow spamming through his service.

You are absolutely right. However, our limits are not really hard limits. If someone occasionally needs to send more emails we do not make a fuss about it. However, a red flag (thanks for mentioning it :) goes up and we check if everything is ok. We never sanction users.

We do have sales teams using Migadu. However, they simply estimated how much they would send and signed up for the higher plan. It's straight forward I believe.

So you have clients sending unsolicited emails touting for business through the same gateways as my mail?

I fear you will not be in the email business for long.

You live up to you nickname :D

Sending sales emails is not the same as spam, at least not in the lines of business using Migadu. We are not judging what people do for living, but rather try to aid them with a worthy advice if there is a better way. Working hand in hand with users pays off and we both enjoy it. We're tired of being nobody to some wise Google(rs)....

If sales stop, the world would stop. Everyone sells something to somebody.

The grandparent post referred specfically to "sending cold emails as a direct sales tool." I'm struggling to find any way to interpret that phrase that doesn't scream "spam" to me. Sending your emails individually from Outlook to an individual you've looked up on the targets website doesn't make it any less spammy.

I'm sure your approach works for the customers you have right now, but if you consider the above to be an acceptable use of your service, then I stand by my statement that you won't last long in the email business.

I see. I will take that as a great suggestion. Thank you. We will update our terms to reflect it.

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