Ask HN: Why bother using MailChimp?

It would be to allow you to concentrate on your core functionality without worrying about whether you are complying with spam laws, getting delivered, what your delivery rates are etc., running the mailserver. It's just paying for all that to be made a lot easier for you. There's lots of services in this area though: mailchimp, campaignmonitor, sendgrid, and Amazon have one now too.

Running your own mailserver is like your own mini-Vietnam war. Looks straight-forward, but you will soon be bogged down and stuck.

Trust me, use a 3rd party service.

Does not need to be mail chimp though. I am using these guys:

http://www.jangosmtp.com/

Crappy site, but good server. Just a well set up SMTP server, so with a few config lines from your app you can send mails through this instead of your own server.

Right... deliverability... getting emails to your users can be maddening or it could be cheap to do it through MailChimp or other alternatives. I wouldn't even think of running my own mailserver these days. But that fits my own specific situation and probably fits most others.