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Comment by boplicity | Hacker News Reader

Software costs can really add up for a small business. I run a relatively small business -- mostly online -- and between 3 main services, the software (and hosting) adds up to around $15k US per year, which is not insignificant. And that's with hosting our own email server, which otherwise would cost us another $15k or so per year to go with an established ESP.

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What's your definition of a "small business" that your email alone would cost you $15K!?!

55 persons using an e3 license would be 15k/y. 55 would definitely fall into my definition of small business

As a solo dev 5 people would feel huge. Going by OECD small is < 50, medium is < 250 and micro is less than < 10.

Small business, a legal designation in the US, can be surprisingly big: Depending on industry, you can have up to 1,500 employees, or $50mm in revenue, and still be considered a small business by the federal government.

https://www.sba.gov/sites/sbagov/files/2023-06/Table%20of%20...

We do a lot of opt-in email for the newsletters we run -- most software (such as MailChimp) that provides the services we need is very expensive, especially if you have more than 100k subscribers. Hence, hosting the email ourselves saves a siginificant amount of money, though at the risk of not being particularly user friendly and also requiring expertise in maintaining the server and email deliverability.

Maybe they're a spam business? $15k a year spend at AWS will get you the ability to send 150 million emails.

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