MailerJS: Send email with client-side JavaScript | Hacker News Reader

MailerJS: Send email with client-side JavaScript

mailerjs.com

52 pointsunignorant29 comments

Flagging for an incredibly misleading topic / tagline. This isn't actually "sending email with client-side javascript;" it's simply a script that allows you to send a message to a service that will generate an email for you. Seriously, it's basically a scripted email form--how this at all interesting?

You can also ask how HTML forms are interesting? (Answer is WuFoo)

Interesting idea. This could be useful for signup and contact forms from a static website.

It's amusing to me that the contact link is just a mailto. Why not use MailerJS?

> It's amusing to me that the contact link is just a mailto. Why not use MailerJS?

In case someone wants to complain that MailerJS doesn't work in their browser, I guess?

I don't see any pricing info on their site. If this is intended to be free for life, then I guess it's pretty nifty. But it would take about 30 minutes for any web developer to duplicate this functionality, so I hope they don't plan on charging for it.

It's hidden until you sign up: - Free - 5 emails/day - Basic ($5/month) - 50 emails/day - Big ($29/month) - 500 emails/day - Huge ($99/month) - 5000 emails/day

That is pretty steep taking into account that even Postmark, which many consider expensive, charges only $1.50 per thousand emails. The basic plan is $3.33 for thousand and you're limited to specific daily limits... I usually don't complain about pricing but this just feels too much. Of course these two services are different but I chose Postmark as it's from the expensive end of email sending services. And one can replicate MailerJS in just one evening (when writing this there might already be a open source clone).

Enough with the whining... The main reason why I'm not a fan is that the pricing is hidden behind sign up and the site gives the impression that the service is free.

I don't see why you'd need to use a third party at all for this type of thing. Postmark is designed to increase email deliverability, but if you're only sending emails to yourself, that shouldn't really be an issue. It seems like good ol' sendmail would do the trick.

Agreed on the pricing though. Doesn't seem very honest.

Sendmail doesn't work if you're serving up your site statically from S3. Then again, their pricing is so ridiculous, its cheaper to just POST the email message via REST to a service to send the mail (Postmark, Sendgrid, AWS SES).

I'm not sure what this solution solves.

That really is apples and oranges.

You need to tell Mailer.js about your API key

What exactly stops me from stealing someone else's API key and using it to send spam? You can't trust the client.

That was my first thought, however, from the docs:

MailerJS will send mail to the address you enter on your account page. You can't specify the receiver dynamically, as client-side JavaScript is publicly accessible by definition, and we want to protect you from spammers.

Why steal someone's api key just so you can send them email?

(not something I would do, but someone else would) To put them over their account limit.

You need to input the domains you'll be running Mailer.js on[1], so perhaps API keys only work on those domains? This is just from preliminary reading, so I could be wrong. :)

[1] https://www.mailerjs.com/documentation

If you're trying to protect from hacking via HTTP Referrer info, you're doing it wrong.

Anyone can fake HTTP Referer info, and if they're going to the trouble of stealing an API key then they're not just a passing bot.

This is terrible. Overpriced web service that sends emails to a single address, 20-lines script calling the API using jQuery $.ajax (why the dependency ?!) and sends the request with GET instead of PUT or POST...

Indeed. Why would you pay for, and be dependent on, a service like this when you could quite easily make something like this? Running on your own server where you have full control.

Isn't GET in place to allow cross site ajax?

This is great but ridiculously overpriced that 1 months delivery is how much I would tack onto a clients bill for building a customer form or implementing this service.

This is just bad value for money

Cool. I can think of many reasons it would be bad to have a mailer on the client side, but a big pro w/ this is that you can send mail easily when you only have file access to say, a client's website.

Oh, collect email in an html form ?

Why email? It seems like an inefficient method to deal with bug reports. Not to mention it seems like this would be really open to abuse.

My guess would be because email is universal, bugtracking platforms are not. It would be easier for me to script a mail filter to auto create bug tickets than wait for them to support my specific kind.

I agree, it's overpriced. I would rather just put a snippet in that tracked javascript errors somehow, and also grabbed all of the user's browser information etc. And bonus points if it takes a screenshot (doable with HTML5) and copies over everything from console.log. Would really help with debugging.

P.S. They should have put the pricing information on the home page. Didn't realize they were a YC company either.

I would rather just put a snippet in that tracked javascript errors somehow, and also grabbed all of the user's browser information etc.

That's a worse user experience, though. And you have no opportunity to ask follow-up questions, or even say "hey, it's fixed!". That kind of customer service goes a long way.

That's a worse user experience, though.

How? Worse than what?

is taking a screenshot really doable with html5? last time I took a look at this it didn't seem possible.

not exactly, but there are approximations like http://html2canvas.hertzen.com/

Open source it. I know, I know, but just do it. Charge for support or something.

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