nothing-special

It may very well be something to try out! I think if we ever have issues with our current setup in the future, this is likely what we'll try next. I really liked MailGun's staff by the way! Raquel, James and Matt were absolute godsends on multiple occasions!

For now though we couldn't possibly be happier and would gladly continue using Postmark even if they dropped the bulk discount rates.

If you're going to do this on your own, this is fantastic advice. The ramp-up period is CRITICAL and you've hit the nail on the head.

Don't forget to setup DKIM, SPF, PTR Records, etc!

PostmarkApp. They only allow transactional emails and they have unbelieveable inbox rates.

I'm not affiliated with them, but might be their biggest fan.

You send from other people's domains without setting up DKIM/SPF? You're fighting a huge uphill battle if that is the case. I would highly recommend sending from a domain you can verify and then using the reply-to field for responses. It isn't perfect, but your deliverability rates will sky rocket.

Can you even get emails to Yahoo addresses?

SES vs Mandrill I believe would have been a better comparison here.

The man hours saved each week alone made using the more expensive companies worth every penny.

I'm not saying a company is better just because they are more expensive, but I will argue you get what you pay for in this industry.

We send hundreds of thousands of emails every month. We're by no means a high volume sender, but we've learned a lot dealing with a bunch of these email providers.

Years ago we started with AWS SES. The pricing was amazing but there was no useful customer service outlet. If you were sending via a blacklisted IP it could be weeks before you we're seeing inboxes reliability again. It wasn't uncommon for us to devote 20+ man hours per week in dealing with email issues while using AWS.

Next we moved to MailGun. This was a HUGE improvement, however we were having to request to be moved to 'non-blacklisted' ip's on a regular basis. The pricing was great, but we were still having to invest too many hours dealing with email problems. Mostly fielding 'here is why your emails went to the spam filter, or why they never showed up' questions from our customers. You shouldn't need a template explaining to your customers why emails are showing up in spam boxes!

To be fair, MailGun was fairly new at this point but they were VERY responsive. IP's that had been blacklisted did not stay that way for long.

Lastly we moved to PostmarkApp. They were by far the most expensive ($1.50 per 1000 emails) but I only now even think of emails maybe once or twice per month. Emails just get through, no spam lists, no outages, no carrier blocks, it's amazing. Also, if you do send with enough volume you can drastically reduce the price. I believe we pay about $0.25 per thousand emails now that we purchase 5 million at a time.

They could triple their price and I would eat the costs.

I'm not affiliated with anyone above.