Show HN: Invite to try fiesta.cc - effortless mailing lists | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Invite to try fiesta.cc - effortless mailing lists

fiesta.cc

51 pointsmdirolf43 comments

Sounds a good concept. Can anyone send email to the created list or just the initial members? What if the list is already created / used by other people?

Only members of the list can send an email to the list - since the list names are tied to the sender's address you don't need to worry about uniqueness (ie. my family@fiesta.cc is different than your family@fiesta.cc)

Can you add addresses to a list later on?

Yup, can add (or remove) addresses at any time using the "List members" link at the bottom of every fiesta email you get.

Ah, very cool :) Thanks for the explanation...

*btw, I would not use a ".cc" domain for the project, since it is mostly used by malware stuff lately :/

The ".cc" is meant to evoke the act of CC'ing somebody in an email, or creating a mailing list just by cc'ing somebody.

Also, they wanted like $1M for fiesta.com or something :P

This may be a terrible idea, but what about FiestaCC.com? More strongly associates "CC" with the product, keeps the familiar ".com" TLD.

Edit: On WHOIS, I see you've already had this idea...

One more thing... what happens if I'm part of two different family@fiesta.cc lists? :-)

when somebody tries to add you to the second one it'll be automatically renamed (just for you, not for everybody else) to family1@fiesta.cc - you can then go into the web UI and rename both however you want!

Now I'm thoroughly impressed, thanks

Mailing list systems are complicated for a reason: the signup process where you have to send a confirmation mail is there to prevent users from unsolicted mails.

How are you going to solve the problem of unsolicted mail deployed through these autovivified mailing lists?

We've got some basic spam prevention already in place with some more advanced ideas being implemented soon.

You're right though, if all else fails the welcome email will just end up having an opt-in link.

There seems to be a problem with the encoding:

Hi, =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Gabriel_Rodr=EDguez_Alberich?=! Choose a password to use for fiesta.cc:

oops, thought that was handled properly. fixing now (if you don't want to wait you can change your name from the "Dashboard" page). Thanks for the heads up!

I love the simple landing page. The only thing I'd change are the screenshots. If you add a highlight to the CC textfield for example, it'd more quickly illustrate the point. Centering the object doesn't really put enough focus on it.

Also, you could put more context in the example. Like saying it's for birthday party or for vacation photo's (like Apple does).

Thanks! I think those are both great suggestions - I'll see what I can do.

Suggestions like that are really helpful as I am definitely not a designer (IADNAD).

Thanks for this, we used librelist.com to create our ML last months, but it was too opened (archives on google, anyone could join) for some people.

https://fiesta.cc/about do you use mongodb in the backend?

If so, could you give us more technical details about how you connect your mail server to the DB?

Yeah, the other nice thing about this compared to librelist is that you can use any list name you want without worrying about conflicts (since lists are tied to the sender's address).

Yup, using MongoDB to store everything. I will definitely be doing a post discussing the architecture, etc. Follow @mdirolf or @fiesta and you'll see it when it pops up.

The short answer, though, is that I'm running a 3 node replica set. Each mailserver (right now there are 2) is running on one of those nodes.

>> Yeah, the other nice thing about this compared to librelist is that you can use any list name you want without worrying about conflicts (since lists are tied to the sender's address).

And that's how clever software is built.

Looks great! I think you should rework the testimonials on the site. I don't think your target audience will recognize a Twitter username.

A feature request would be a link to see the full history of the email list. Would be great to be able to add another person down the line and them being able to read up on what topics have already been discussed.

Thanks! Yeah I just added the testimonials this morning so they definitely can be spruced up I think :)

Archiving is definitely in the works. It'll be opt-in, per list, that way we still never save any emails by default.

I'll be around here to answer any questions about fiesta. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Awesome concept. It was about time someone innovated on the mailing list concept.

I like how simple this is, but I find the branding a bit off. Nothing is memorable about fiesta.cc, and a .cc domain tells me you may not be serious enough about your business to invest in a better domain.

Thanks for the feedback! I was thinking of .cc as a feature, designed to evoke the act of CC'ing an address to create a list. Wasn't a decision made due to lack of seriousness or to cut costs, but maybe still needs rethinking if the CC connection isn't obvious...

Very clever but I never put the act of CC'ing and .cc together. Not sure others will either so I have to agree with the original commenter.

It's really too bad that domain extensions matter at all in how the service is perceived.

You certainly have thought about that. It does make sense when you write it. I think with the right treatment you can shape your brand effectively. I think the .cc tld is still obscure enough that you could shape it to mean email 'cc'.

I disagree, I didn't think of the site in poor regard because of the CC but I did understand the Carbon Copy reference right away so that may of had something to do with it.

My only point is, what domain do you visit regularly that uses .cc? It just makes me second guess the credibility.

Is there a UI that I can use to edit the lists? The whole plustag thing seems tedious.

Yeah the plustag thing is really the advanced UI - if you click "List Members" on the bottom of any emails you get from fiesta (including the welcome email), you'll see the web UI.

How do you plan to make money? Annoying ads in the emails or some other idea?

In the short term, I don't :P. I have some long term ideas, ideally keeping it ad-free forever.

Possibly OT but I would gladly pay to use something like mailchimp or aweber lite if the deliverability/reputation was good. Lite in this case meaning 10 minute admin learning curve and a simplified feature set. I know that's vague. but in general I find the the current crop of email web apps to be bloated and hence too time consuming.

Also would be useful for business if I could "private label" the service to work on my own domain name (or sub domain) simply by adding a fiesta.cc mx record to my dns.

this is exactly one of the ideas that I want to pursue!

Off-topic, but your roommate is my colleague.....all the best :)

oh awesome! he is a great guy

Great idea, very simple and instantly cross-platform.

thanks!

Isn't this what Posterous supposedly does? In relation to Yahoo/Google groups, where does list archives go?

the defining feature of fiesta.cc (as opposed to posterous, etc) is that list names don't have to be unique - so anybody can make a new list called "family@fiesta.cc" without worrying about registering the name or running into collisions.

Right now messages aren't saved at all (for privacy reasons). In the future there will be optional (opt-in) archiving like yahoo/google groups has.

Okay thanks. It seems like an interesting concept, something that should be native to Email perhaps. However, outside of this thread, if I visit your site (as an average user), the concept of how it works doesn't seem easy right away. I'll have to play/test to figure it out.

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