driaug

Most likely you did not answer the questions that are most important to them.

- How will you make sure that only subscribed recipients will get your emails - How will you handle bounces and complaints - How will you monitor your sending

Don't beat around the bush and you will be approved in less than 1 day.

All,

Founder of Plunk here. Yes, Plunk is designed to work with AWS SES. I was not the one that made it hard for folks to self-host their own email infrastructure. SES is simply the cheapest and most reliable option out there. Reminder, we are not talking about a private "let's send 10 emails a day" solution. This needs to deliver marketing emails at scale.

Does that mean you have to use SES, no. The code is open-source, swap it out for another provider if you truly believe that you can do it better. I'm open for contributions.

That's the beauty of open-source.

You can!

https://docs.useplunk.com/working-with-contacts/metadata

I use the built-in capabilities of AWS and Vercel.

https://vercel.com/docs/concepts/projects/domains

Love that one! That would definitely be the carving of my space in the market. There are so many email tools out there, really setting myself apart in the market was a difficult one! In the end, I managed to do it with affordability and DX.

That's actually good feedback. I've been chatting with people who switched providers and am building out comparison pages at the moment!

Thank you so much for the interaction and feedback.

That's a great question. The 3 email categories IMO are the following.

- Transactional: one-time emails, sent through an API on-demand (e.g. password resets, magic links...)

- Automations: Repeatable sequences such as onboarding flows with delays and follow-ups

- Broadcasts: Emails sent to a segment of contacts (e.g. newsletters, changelogs...)

Thank you very much for the kind words!

Thank you very much for this, I wasn't aware of that!

It was built for in-product actions but you can use it for whatever suits your needs. It may need some extra code on your side to make that work though.

I am currently using it to check up on my users after they have either skipped or completed the onboarding so it is definitely doable!

I believe email clients send back a rejection if it landed in spam. It is one of the metrics AWS SES can track for you.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/dg/monitor-sending-ac...

The fact that you don't need to set up and manage your own SMTP server is a big advantage I believe.

Validating was really easy. I am really active on Twitter and saw loads of people complain about terrible APIs offered by some tools and the ridiculous pricing of others.

+ I also had this problem myself so I knew it was a big point of frustration.

I had pretty much validated the idea before creating the MVP!

Splunk is in a very different part of the landscape than Plunk so legally there isn't that much of an issue. Verbally it may be more confusing but it'll be fine!

A very big part of what Plunk does is giving you the opportunity to link multiple events together and delay emails. You can extend it to users that have clicked button A and B but not button C and send those an email after 5 days. Significantly harder to implement and a lot of code that isn't really used elsewhere!

That would be very valuable to my development! You can always reach out to me at dries@useplunk.com

Sorry about the confusing wording, with bounce I mean both hard bounces, rejects and complaints (they are all monitored appropriately). They are all taken into account when calculating the % because they all have impact on the domain reputation.

Thank you very much for this incredible feedback, very kind of you!

I have already made some minor changes (fixed the typo and moved dedicated support).

Tomorrow I will be looking into altering the copy because I do understand what you are saying and have heard the same feedback about the term "behavioural email tool"from a couple of people!

Thank you very much for linking Stripe Atlas' guide, seems really helpful and in-depth!

I get what you mean by this! Let me clarify what my way of thought is behind the "completely free, no strings attached". I do not ask for your credit card info, I don't put you on a trial that magically renews at the end of the month, I don't offer you a sketchy sign-on deal with an unexpected bill at the end of the month. I try to make it as ethical as possible, unlike some other marketing/emailing tools.

That is my meaning behind no strings attached. Of course I put some features behind a subscription because they demand significant work from my side (managing the domains is one of those).

At scale this should work fine. Some parts of the dashboard are not yet prepared for that amount of data to flow in though, may be hard to navigate and monitor.

I am also looking at the pricing for that because right now I offer unlimited emails but I need a good way to compensate for power users like yourself without going completely overboard.

I have built-in an automatic catch, if x% (still looking at what a good value for x is) of your emails bounce then your account gets quarantined and we see what we can do about that. That way we can prevent damage before other users get affected.

Does that make sense?

No worries! Thank you for the kind words.

It is very hard to make statements about this. It very much depends on the reputation of your own domain (if you are not using our domain to send your emails) and the content of your emails if they will end up in spam. I have yet to see one of my own emails origination from @useplunk.com end up in somebody's spam folder! I believe that is a great start and further down the line (with more data) I may be able to make specific claims about it!

Valuable feedback, thank you for this! How would you feel about a demo video where I show you how to set it up and go through the features at the same time?