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Comment by danielfoster | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious what good alternatives to Mailchimp exist? My experience working with them is that they're a solid but outdated option.

For example I went to import some contacts today and was surprised that Mailchimp was unable to automatically correct basic syntax errors such as "usergmail.com", "user@gmail" or even "user@gmail.com <FirstName LastName>"

The fact that their product management team never thought it was a priority to include such an easy time-saving feature makes me think they have a rather hard-headed culture that is missing the boat on a lot of things. I can see why they would be difficult for Shopify to work with.

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You say they are basic syntax errors but fixing them is not the place of the application. "usergmail.com" could have the @ at basically any spot before the I and be a totally believable email address. Sure, statistically speaking, "user@gmail.com" is the most likely option, but "usergm@ail.com" would be a perfectly believable email for a game master that manages ail.com.

Given that mailchimp is a bulk email delivery service, I would hate to get spam at user@gmail.com just because someone forgot the @ on their "u@sergmail.com" entry.

That's a good point. I guess I'm looking at this from a UI / usability standpoint. I feel it is Mailchimp's job to speed up my email marketing-- that's the job I've hired it to do. If I just wanted to send email I would use a leaner service at a lower cost.

Mailchimp already filters out bad email addresses (nospam@gmail.com, etc.). Most addresses have a format like "sallysanders11" or "michael.smith." The chances of there being another user on the same domain are scarce and indeed at least on my mailing list, 70% of the people signed up are on Gmail.

There's no reason why a good piece of software should not be able to use a little bit of intelligence and ask me if I want to auto-correct my addresses-- within reason, of course.

sendgrid or mailgun

In a previous company during the GDPR switchover we had to break contract with them because they were unvilling to sign any no 3rd party sharing agreement. Once you grow big, the spectrum of failure scenarios grows also, I guess.

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