DEV Community: Shoplytics

You must start using AWS SES today. Here's why and how.

Shoplytics — Sun, 02 Mar 2025 11:57:09 +0000

Every often i keep seeing a post to the tune of .....

"My 'Email Service Provider' has increased prices. What do i do now"?

Here's why this is happening.

A lot of consolidation has happened in the email industry over the last few years. Most of the better Email Service Providers (ESP's) have been acquired.

Sendgrid has been acquired by Twilio
Mailgun has been acquired by Sinch
Mailchimp has been acquired by Intuit
Postmark has been acquired by ActiveCampaign

..... and so on.

The result, more often than not, has been a rent-seeking-behavior on part of these (and other) ESP's. Free plans have gone away or have been tweaked and you are forced to pay more for nothing extra in return. You are in a hostage situation.

Here's what i suggest you must do.

You should start using AWS SES.

The knight in shining armor has always been AWS SES. They have had the same price sine a looong time - $1 per 10,000 emails.

I'm not asking you to move lock-stock-barrel to SES.

NO.

Start to look at AWS SES as your Plan-B.

Start by using SES as your secondary email service provider. Move a tiny part of your transactional and/or marketing workloads to SES. Keep doing this over a period of a few months till AWS SES becomes your primary ESP.

It's free to open an AWS account and takes a tiny effort to get production access to SES.

There's three ways you can start this process.

Direct integration with AWS SES: I would recommend this if you are a Developer and have mostly transactional email needs. AWS SES API is quite comprehensive. The documentation is exhaustive and you should be able to figure things out with minimal effort. This will cost you almost ZERO, apart from your time and effort. Even if you have high volumes SES is just $1 per 10,000 emails.
Use a cloud SaaS that integrates with AWS SES: There are quite a few out there. I would recommend SENDUNE (https://sendune.com) for its overall simplicity, ease of use, and generous free tier. The paid plan is a low $24 per month for 250,000 emails.
Self host an email application that hooks into SES: This is the best option if you are familiar launching and managing servers. Again, there are quite a few software's available here. I would recommend Sendy (https://sendy.co). You can start with EC2 or a DigitalOcean droplet and scale according to your needs.

If you do not like any of the above options, just do an online search. There are other services that let you use AWS SES to send emails. Choose one and get started today.

You will thank me in a couple of months.

Why would anyone fund a company $20m?

Shoplytics — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 11:12:33 +0000

"Why would anyone fund a company $20m for providing a service that is no different from many-many others?

This article is highly opinionated. Please bear with me. Someone is
always wrong on the internet and today might be my day to be wrong.

I'm talking about a company called Resend (resend.com) which launched in 2023 and has raised $20+ million.

AND,

I want to compare it with SENDUNE (sendune.com), a product that my company has built and maintained since 2018. We raised zero dollars.

Why do i choose to compare with Resend?

Because both SENDUNE and Resend are in a similar space; Email Delivery. What makes us even more similar is - behind the scenes - both of us use AWS SES to send emails. The only difference is Resend uses their own SES account for all their clients. SENDUNE operates on a bring-your-own SES basis. The end goal for both companies is the same - to safely deliver transactional and marketing emails on behalf of companies that use us.

Resend is well positioned. It is a YC company. Apparently Paul Graham described Resend as “the Stripe for Email” ¯_(ツ)_/¯. Email is a decentralised system. The standards and protocols are very rigid and changes are few and far between. These standards are what makes this highly decentralised system work. There is really nothing one can innovate on email API's. Maybe make the API documentation page pretty. That's about it. If i were asked to assign that tagline to anyone, i would give it to AWS SES.

The YC Network and the Hacker News platform gives Resend phenomenal marketing outreach and escape velocity. We do not have all that but we did have our 'front page moment' on Hacker News.

Perhaps the single biggest advantage of being a YC company is a readily available market of fellow alumni companies you can sell to. Resend claims a user base 200,000 developers. SENDUNE has about 5,000. Resend's revenue is $5 million in 2024*. SENDUNE's revenue is closer to zero. Most of our users are on our very generous free plan.

I'm jealous of Resend and what they have achieved.

SENDUNE is a favorite side project for us. I personally like the dopamine hits i get when people discover us on their own and start using our product. There are lots of services that let you hook into AWS SES and send emails. Some of them are quite popular. We never considered any of them as our competitors. We know we have a far superior product.

To put it crudely, all of us are just wrappers around AWS SES. This is why I cannot comprehend why anyone would assign $ millions of value to someone like us. What am i missing?

Yet, i now believe Resend is a good thing for SENDUNE. First, we know we have something valuable. Second, we have someone we can call our competition and benchmark ourselves against.

My understanding of the industry is this ....

Email is a crowded space. There are probably a 1,000+ email service providers catering to the Transactional and Marketing email needs of companies of all sizes.

Yes, you can make a little money in the email sending business - enough to pay a small team decent salaries and take care of servers. But there is no 'VC Returns Level' money in this space.

Email is a mundane thing. Email is a solved problem. There are really no moats here. Anyone can launch a similar service with a little effort. This is another reason why i cannot comprehend VC's are throwing risk capital at a company in this line of business. VC's expect a 10x return on their investment over a five to seven year period. When VC's gives you $20 million, they expect to get back $200 million.

Get Acquired or IPO?

That's a lot of pressure on Resend to deliver. You can get away with high growth numbers for a few years and keep the VC's happy. The YC network boost will give you those numbers. Ultimately Resend will have to get acquired or go the IPO route to satisfy VC's.

I'm not sure if Resend will be an attractive acquisition target. A major amount of consolidation has already happened in the industry. Twilio acquired Sendgrid. Intuit acquired Mailchimp. Postmark has been acquired by ActiveCampaign. Mailgun is with Sinch. All these companies that got acquired had built their own email delivery infrastructure over many years. Resend just uses AWS SES. So there's really no technology IP that comes with this deal.

An IPO does not make sense unless it involves $billion+ in valuation. Resend will have to deliver a revenue that can get them that valuation multiple or resort to some EV/EBIDTA financial engineering. Sorry Resend, if i'm scaring you ;-).

Closing

Resend is a great product. But the financial eco system in which they are embedded is their Achilles' heel.

We have our advantage. We do not have the burden of venture capital. We have no growth targets or milestones to hit. That gives us immense independence and we intend to keep it that way. This is how we will compete with Resend or any others in our industry. By being independent of VC distractions and focussing on product.

I sincerely wish Resend will overcome these odds and succeed by a large margin. I thank them for showing us that we too are a valuable product. If you are using Resend you should continue using them.

Meanwhile we have decided to adopt a Basecamp style business model for SENDUNE.

It's going to be a long game of survival. Something we're used to.

Thank you for reading.

'* I could not find a more reliable source. Leave a comment if you find one.

How to warm up your email account for AWS SES

Shoplytics — Thu, 10 Oct 2024 07:26:59 +0000

🔥 What exactly is "warming up an email account"?

Email warm-up is the process of gradually increasing the number of emails sent from a new or inactive email account to build its reputation and avoid being marked as spam. When an email account is freshly created or hasn't been used for a while, sending a large volume of emails right away can raise red flags for email service providers (like Gmail or Yahoo or Outlook). This could cause emails to land in the spam folder or even get the account blacklisted.

To warm up an email account, small batches of emails are sent initially, then slowly ramped up over time. These emails are also sent to known recipients who are likely to engage (open, reply, etc.), which helps signal to email providers that the account is trustworthy.

The goal is to establish a positive sending reputation with email providers so that future campaigns reach inboxes instead of spam folders.

New email accounts that immediately start blasting off a huge volume of emails will trigger spam filters at email service providers. Once your domain or IP address is flagged as a spammer, it is almost impossible to shake off that reputation.

Email warm up - The DIY (do it yourself) way.

There are a lot of services that promise to warm up your email account for you in return for a payment. I have not tested any of these services. What i can only tell you is warming up your email is easy and you can do it yourself without spending $$$$. All that is needed is a little patience from you.

Here are some steps I HIGHLY RECOMMEND you follow in order to warm up your email account. Whether using a paid service or doing it yourself, the email warm up process will take a few weeks. Avoid anybody promising quick results

Week 1 - 2

Send a Few Emails Initially: Start by sending a small number of emails (10-15 per day) to friends, colleagues, or yourself. Make sure you send them to as many email services as possible - Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, iCloud, Zoho, Protonmail, Yandex, etc.
Personalize Your Emails: Make sure your emails are personalized and relevant to the recipients. Do not use ALL CAPS subject lines, excessive punctuation, or clickbait headlines.
Include Unsubscribe Link: It's always advisable to include an unsubscribe link in your email. It keeps the recipients happy and is an important signal to the email service providers that you are are a serious adherent to best practices.
Engage With Your Audience: An email is designed to be a two-way conversation. Encourage your recipients to respond and engage them with your replies.
Monitor These Initial Emails: Many email service providers randomly send the first few emails into spam folders. Look out for such emails and mark them as 'Not Spam'.

Week 3 - 4

Here you will continue doing everything you did during the first two weeks plus the following.

Increase Volume Gradually: Slowly increase the number of emails you send each day by 10-20% every few days. Avoid sudden spikes in volume.
Monitor Engagement: Track open rates, click rates, and responses. Adjust your sending volume and email content based on the engagement you receive.

Week 5 Onwards

By now your email account would have been sufficiently warmed up. You must still follow these best practices to maintain your reputation.

Send Relevant Content: Always ensure your emails are relevant and valuable to your recipients.
Stay Consistent: Maintain a consistent sending schedule to build trust with email service providers.

How SENDUNE helps.

For those of you who haven't heard about it, SENDUNE is a free and open source Email Platform built for anyone using AWS SES.

Every account on SENDUNE is automatically enrolled in their InboxVISA program - a collection of email sending best practices (including email warm ups) and real-time heuristics adopted by SENDUNE to protect you and guide emails safely into user inboxes. While these practices create trust with email service providers, the final decider in inbox placement is the content of your email. Ultimately, the only one who can guarantee safe inbox placement is YOU.

How to warm up your email account for AWS SES

Shoplytics — Thu, 10 Oct 2024 07:26:52 +0000

🔥 What exactly is "warming up an email account"?

The goal is to establish a positive sending reputation with email providers so that future campaigns reach inboxes instead of spam folders.

Email warm up - The DIY (do it yourself) way.

Week 1 - 2

Send a Few Emails Initially: Start by sending a small number of emails (10-15 per day) to friends, colleagues, or yourself. Make sure you send them to as many email services as possible - Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, iCloud, Zoho, Protonmail, Yandex, etc.
Personalize Your Emails: Make sure your emails are personalized and relevant to the recipients. Do not use ALL CAPS subject lines, excessive punctuation, or clickbait headlines.
Include Unsubscribe Link: It's always advisable to include an unsubscribe link in your email. It keeps the recipients happy and is an important signal to the email service providers that you are are a serious adherent to best practices.
Engage With Your Audience: An email is designed to be a two-way conversation. Encourage your recipients to respond and engage them with your replies.
Monitor These Initial Emails: Many email service providers randomly send the first few emails into spam folders. Look out for such emails and mark them as 'Not Spam'.

Week 3 - 4

Here you will continue doing everything you did during the first two weeks plus the following.

Increase Volume Gradually: Slowly increase the number of emails you send each day by 10-20% every few days. Avoid sudden spikes in volume.
Monitor Engagement: Track open rates, click rates, and responses. Adjust your sending volume and email content based on the engagement you receive.

Week 5 Onwards

By now your email account would have been sufficiently warmed up. You must still follow these best practices to maintain your reputation.

Send Relevant Content: Always ensure your emails are relevant and valuable to your recipients.
Stay Consistent: Maintain a consistent sending schedule to build trust with email service providers.

How SENDUNE helps.

For those of you who haven't heard about it, SENDUNE is a free and open source Email Platform built for anyone using AWS SES.

Marketing Emails with AWS SES

Shoplytics — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 11:22:31 +0000

The first order of business is to convince yourself to use "SENDUNE + AWS SES" for all your marketing emails. Here's our rationale why you should do it.

If you are a Startup, chances are your entire tech stack is on AWS but you are not using AWS SES. Instead you use a third party email service like Mailchimp or SendGrid.

AWS SES has the same reliability and deliverability as any other email service. And it comes at a price point too good to ignore. So why does SES not have 'top-of-mind' recall when it comes to marketing email. There are a few reasons we know of.

AWS SES is hard to get started with. You need to get out of the sandbox first.
There's pages and pages of documentation to deal with.
There's no contact management.
You cannot design and manage email templates.
Expensive add-ons (delivery dashboard/virtual deliverability manager).

Is there a way to overcomes these hurdles? YES. That's where SENDUNE comes in.

SENDUNE abstracts away all the complexity of sending marketing emails with AWS. What you get is a highly reliable way to deliver all your marketing emails at a fraction of the cost.

Marketing emails are messages sent by businesses to promote their products or services directly to current and potential customers. These emails are a key part of digital marketing strategies and can serve various purposes, such as announcing new products, sharing special offers, or providing valuable content to engage the audience.

Create Email Templates.

A template needs to be created in SENDUNE for every kind of marketing email you wish to send. You can create templates using the no-code designer or the html editor or the plain text version.

Click the 'Send' button at the top to open the email composer (see video below). There are three template categories. You can create as many templates as you wish within each category.

SENDUNE Designer: A visual editor that makes it very easy to design emails.
HTML Editor: Use this if want to code your own emails. If you have purchased any HTML template, you can copy-paste that code in the HTML Editor.
Plain Text: This is as simple as it gets. Use it compose plain text emails just like you do in Gmail or Outlook. Though they look simple, plain text emails perform very well.

Create Template - Watch Video

Send Emails.

To send marketing emails, select one or more contacts, choose a template and click 'Send'. Once the emails are sent you can view delivery statistics. See video below.

Send Emails - Watch Video

SENDUNE handles everything.

SENDUNE automatically queues your emails and delivers them according to the sending rate available for your AWS SES account. SENDUNE also processes all delivery stats as part of the InboxVISA to protect your account.

That's all there is to it. Here are some takeaways.

You can create any fancy template using the SENDUNE Designer or the HTML Editor.
You can have as many 'replace-tags (merge tags)' as you want within each marketing email template.
You can create as many marketing email templates as you wish.
Once your templates are ready you can forget all about them. They will just work. SENDUNE + AWS SES is that reliable.
You can give access to your SENDUNE account to your marketing or product teams so they can create the templates.

There is no limit to the kinds of marketing emails you can create and send.

Remember all these marketing templates reside outside your application code. So you can come back and make any changes without any downtime to your application. That's the ultimate beauty of using SENDUNE.

Convinced? Signup for the forever free account now.

Transactional Emails with AWS SES

Shoplytics — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 10:22:53 +0000

The first order of business is to convince yourself to use "SENDUNE + AWS SES" for all your transactional emails. Here's our rationale why you should do it.

If you are a Startup, chances are your entire tech stack is on AWS but you are not using AWS SES. Instead you use a third party email service like Mailchimp or SendGrid.

AWS SES has the same reliability and deliverability as any other email service. And it comes at a price point too good to ignore. So why does SES not have 'top-of-mind' recall when it comes to transactional email. There are a few reasons we know of.

AWS SES is hard to get started with. You need to get out of the sandbox first.
There's pages and pages of documentation to deal with.
There's no contact management.
You cannot design and manage email templates.
Expensive add-ons (delivery dashboard/virtual deliverability manager).

Is there a way to overcomes these hurdles? YES. That's where SENDUNE comes in.

SENDUNE abstracts away all the complexity of sending transactional emails with AWS. What you get is a highly reliable way to deliver all your transactional emails at a fraction of the cost.

Transactional emails are emails that your customers expect to receive from you. I mean they are refreshing their inbox waiting for your email to show up. The greatest examples of transactional emails are the ones you send for user 'Signups' and 'Password Resets'.

A template needs to be created in SENDUNE for every kind of transactional email you wish to send. You can create templates using the no-code designer or the html editor or the plain text version.

Let's illustrate how you can set up an email template. We'll use a live example - i.e. an actual transactional email that we use at SENDUNE for user sign ups. In our case we have created an email template using the plain text designer. Our user sign up email template looks like this.

This template is triggered via an API call whenever a new user wants to sign up. Notice the template contains a 'replace tag' in double curly brackets { {signup-link} }.

The API call is a simple cURL request. The { {signup-link} } is replaced with an actual link the end user can click to complete the signup process. Below is the actual email sent. Users click on the link and complete the sign up process.

That's all there is to it. Here are some takeaways.

We have created a plain text template. You can create any fancy template using the SENDUNE Designer or the HTML Editor.
You can have as many 'replace-tags (merge tags)' as you want within each template.
You can create as many transactional templates as you wish.
Once your templates are ready you can forget all about them. They will just work. We have clients who have created transactional email templates for signups and password resets many years ago and haven't touched them since. SENDUNE + AWS SES is that reliable.
You can have your engineering teams or product managers create the templates while the tech team just does the API integration.

There is no limit to the kinds of transactional emails you can create and send. Apart from Sign ups and Password Resets you can create transactional emails for sending invoices, order notifications, payment updates, e-commerce notifications, or just about anything.

Remember all these templates reside outside your application code. So you can come back and make any changes without any downtime to your application. That's the ultimate beauty of using SENDUNE.

Convinced? Signup for the forever free SENDUNE account now.

Free CMMS

Shoplytics — Sat, 28 Sep 2024 10:28:41 +0000

Free CMMS" (freecmms.org) is a free enterprise grade CMMS software built ground up with the single goal of making it super free and easy to use. Free. ❤️ Fits All Industries. ❤️ Made for SME's.

Free CMMS is available on the web, android, and ios.

Free CMMS (freecmms.org) is a free Computerised Maintenance Management System(CMMS) to manage your assets and related work orders at your factory, shop floor, building, car fleet, restaurant chain, solar and wind sites or just about any industry.

A Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) is software designed to help organisations manage and streamline their maintenance operations.

It centralises maintenance data, automates work order processes, and optimises asset tracking, allowing maintenance teams to proactively address issues, reduce downtime, and allocate resources effectively.

By providing real-time insights and comprehensive reporting capabilities, FreeCMMS (freecmms.org) enhances operational efficiency and supports informed decision-making in various industries, including manufacturing, construction, and transportation.

Below is a non-exhaustive list of features you get with freecmms.org. You can have them all for free.

1. Locations & Asset Management:
Flexible enough to fit almost ANY industry. Hierarchy of 'Location > SubLocation > Asset > SubAsset > Part > Details > MaintenanceSchedules'. Create one asset model and copy paste to generate more.

2. Preventive Maintenance:
Attach 'Maintenance Activities' to Assets/Sub Assets/Parts and have them repeat at any time-bound or event-bound interval of your choosing.

3. Checklists:
'Checklists' are probably the most complex work flows in any CMMS. Free CMMS makes these smooth as butter while assuring all audit trails.

4. QR Codes:
Every Asset/Sub-Asset/Part gets its unique QR code. Anyone can scan QR codes to report issues.

5. Team Management:
Create internal users (employees) and external users (vendors, contractors). Assign user-wise granular permissions (view only, view and edit).

6. Mobile Apps:
The super simple mobile apps (available natively on iPhone and Android) are a rage in the renewable energy sector. They'll do wonders for your team too.

7. Automated Work Orders:
Automatically generate repetitive work orders based on preventive maintenance schedules attached to Assets/Sub Assets/Parts.

8. Inventory Management:
Create 'Warehouse Locations'. Add parts, part details, prices, quantities, manufacturer and vendor details, minimum order quantities, etc.

9. Sensor Data Capture:
Capture data originating from any of your sensors and use our super simple API to update work orders.

10. Document Management:
A central repository where you can upload all documents and images and attach them to assets, work orders, etc.

11. Vendor Management:
Centrally manage your Manufacturers, Vendors, Contractors, etc. along with their addresses and contact details. Attach them to work orders or purchase orders.

12: Audit Trails:
Every user action pertaining to a work order is recorded for future reference and auditing purpose.

13: Security First Architecture:
Free CMMS is built on a 'Security First' architecture. The Identity and Access Management (IAM) module lets you set very granular user access to your data.

14. 99.95% Uptime: The server architecture is guaranteed to have an uptime of 99.95% on a monthly basis for enterprise accounts and 99% for free accounts. We stay up so your plants can stay up.

Email Deliverability and Inbox Placement — Breaking Myths.

Shoplytics — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 07:19:21 +0000

Transactional and Marketing email delivery lessons from SENDUNE (https://sendune.com)

Every Email Service Provider (ESP) claims to have the best deliverability. These statements are misleading. Let’s talk about this a bit.

Email is a decentralised system. Every ESP is like a separate country. Just like every country gets to decide who they let in, every ESP gets to decide which email to receive and what to do with it (like send to inbox or send to junk). It means that the Sending ESP has zero control over the Receiving ESP. So any statements guaranteeing email deliverability are bunk.

A well governed ESP, just like a well governed country, adheres to some rules and thereby builds a reputation. It is this reputation that allows the frictionless exchange of emails (i.e. deliverability).

So how do things work?

Email deliverability and inbox placement are a function of two things.

Adhering to industry standards (DMARC, DKIM, SPF, etc): All reputed ESP’s, including SENDUNE, give you the tools to adhere to industry standards. In fact SENDUNE insisted on these standards from the very start (early 2018), much before they became mandatory. Adhering to these standards is like getting a ‘visa-on-arrival’ to another ESP. So deliverability comes down to the content of your email.
The content of your email: Email is a ‘Receivers’ prerogative, not the ‘Senders’. If you are sending unsolicited emails, the pedigree of your ESP cannot help you in any way. In fact every ESP including SENDUNE will kick spammers out without a moments hesitation.
Adhering to industry standards is a one time effort. Making content relevant to your subscribers is an ongoing effort. Focus on this and your emails will always hit the inbox.

Happy emailing.

SENDUNE is a one-stop email platform for AWS Developers and Startups using AWS. Just connect your AWS Account to handle all your transactional and marketing Emails, SMS, OTPs for free.

Getting production access to AWS SES (2024)

Shoplytics — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 07:22:30 +0000

NOTE: An always-updated article is available on our blog at Getting production access to AWS SES.

As of early 2024, AWS has changed the process to get production access to the Simple Email Service (SES). You are now required to have a domain with DNS records for SPF, DMARC, and DKIM in place before you can raise a ticket asking AWS to move you out of the SES Sandbox. This is a progressive step in controlling spam.

These steps are for everyone who wants to send emails using AWS SES and not just SENDUNE users. SENDUNE users must first complete the setups in your settings dashboard and directly move to Step 9 below.

Don’t let the steps intimidate you. They look complicated but are quite easy.

Login to your AWS account. Search for ‘SES’ and go to the Simple Email Service dashboard.
Click the the dropdown at the top-right. Select the AWS region from which you want to send emails.
Select ‘Account dashboard’ option from the left panel. Then click the ‘Get set up page’ button.
Click ‘Create identity’. Identity here refers to an active domain that represents the business on behalf of which the emails will be sent.
Select the ‘Domain’ radio button. Then enter your domain or sub-domain name. Then choose options as shown in the image below. It is recommended you use a sub-domain to send your emails because your main domain might be used for your business email. It is VERY IMPORTANT that the domain you enter here have an active website that showcases the nature of your business.
You will be presented with 4 DNS Records (3 CNAME + 1 TXT). Enter these DNS records in your domain Registrars dashboard. These DNS records must not be deleted as long as you want to send emails.
AWS automatically checks for these DNS records at regular intervals. Once these records are validated, you will receive a confirmation email. It usually takes a few minutes but occasionally can take up to an hour to validate these records.
In case you do not receive the above mail you can go to ‘Identities’ section in SES dashboard to check for the verification status of your domain. SES dashboard will display a ‘Verified’ status.
Click ‘Get set up’ from left panel and then click ‘Request production access’.
Choose the type of emails you want to send, ‘Marketing’ or ‘Transactional’. Enter the same domain that you have entered earlier. Accept terms and submit request. It is VERY IMPORTANT that the domain you enter here have an active website that showcases the nature of your business. AWS might reject your request if you do not have a website or just have a generic landing page.
That’s it. You can sit back and relax. If everything is in order AWS will move your SES account into production and you will be able to send emails. It might take upto a day before AWS grants your request. Occasionally AWS might send you an email asking for more details. Reply with as much detail as possible. You must be able to convince AWS that you are a genuine email sender.
You will receive an email once AWS moves your SES account out of the sandbox. You can also click ‘Account dashboard’ from the left panel and see your sending limits. For new accounts AWS grants a sending limit of 50,000 emails er day with a sending rate of 14 emails per second.
If you need more you can always raise a request to increase your limits.
You can request a raise for your ‘Sending quota’.
You can also request a raise for your ‘Sending rate’.
And finally, keep an eye on your sending reputation. You can find this by clicking ‘Reputation metrics’ in the SES dashboard. Make sure your reputation is always ‘Healthy’. AWS will block your account if you send unsolicited emails. These blocks are usually permanent. The block is not only for your AWS account but also for your domain.

Happy emailing.

Stripe Country Comparison (Spreadsheet)

Shoplytics — Sat, 11 Jan 2020 06:54:26 +0000

Stripe is currently available in 43 countries. The charges vary country by country. As a thumb rule, Stripe charges are ~ 6%.

This Google Sheet compares all 43 Stripe countries. Make a copy if you wish to edit it.

Stripe charges depend on four main factors.

Business Location: The country where your company (and bank account) is registered.
Customer Card Type: Local cards are charged less while international cards are charged about 1.5% more.
Presentment Currency: The currency in which you bill your customers.
Payout Currency: Your local currency. Stripe usually pays you only in your local currency. Stripe charges a 2% currency conversion fee if your Payout Currency is different from your Presentment Currency. :(

Assuming your presentment and payout currencies are the same, top-3 countries with highest Stripe charges are ...

Mexico (7.10%)
Hong Kong (6.25%)
Malaysia (5.90%)

Again, assuming your presentment and payout currencies are the same, European countries have the lowest Stripe charges (2.15% and 3.65% for local and international cards respectively).

Within EU, Norway has the highest Stripe charges (4.90% and 5.40% for local and international cards respectively).

Original Source: https://blog.sendune.com/stripe-country-comparison

What makes a good subscription billing system?

Shoplytics — Mon, 09 Dec 2019 11:21:10 +0000

What makes a good billing system?

A few months back i was asked to collaborate on a payments solution for Send With SES - a wrapper service to send Emails, SMS, and Push Notifications from your own AWS Account. The mandate was to make the subscription billing process very smooth and 100% transparent to end users.

We studied the current trend. The general process for SaaS companies is to have ...

exotically named subscription plans.
mostly 3-4 plan varieties compared in a columnar format - but some very complex.
one of the plan (definitely not the cheapest one) is given a special label, like “Popular”.
an 'Enterprise Plan' that doesn't have a price. Just a 'Contact Us'.
roundabout cancellations process.
delete data on subscription cancellations.
This is followed by some FAQs where one of the question is “Can i cancel my subscription?”, to which the answer is, “Of course you can anytime.”

Nothing wrong about these patterns. To each his own. Somebody started this and it became an acceptable trend. Our objective was to make things more simpler.

So our question was, "How can we simplify things and be better?"

A customer who wishes to use a subscription product or service faces multiple decision points. We narrowed these down to the following …

Selecting a subscription plan.
Upgrading/downgrading plans.
Adding/managing credit cards.
Payment history.
Data retention.
Billing communications.
Refunds.
Cancellations.

Once we identified customer decision points we had to figure out ways to simplify them. Simplifying each process boiled down to be more of a Management decision or a UIUX decision than a technical one. In all cases we found that simplifying a process automatically made the process more transparent.

Here's some points on what we did with small explanations of why. Some are Management decisions while the rest are UIUX decisions. YMMV.

Unified Billing Dashboard. We made a single page UI for everything related to billing ... View All Plans, Switch Plans, Add/Delete Cards, Set Default Card, Billing History, Download Invoices, Cancel Subscription ... EVERYTHING can be achieved from one single page. Our objective was to achieve any end-user-intent within 2 clicks.
No Exotic Names: Our plans are simply named, Free, Small, Medium, Large, and Extra Large. So when somebody says, "We are using the 'Medium Plan' in Send With SES", others in their office will automatically know there are alternate plans like ‘Small’ or ‘Large’. This is not the case when you say something like, "We are using the 'Garden Plan'". Our plan names are easy to remember and communicate.
All Plans Include All Features. The first question that comes up when signing up for a subscription is, “Which plan do i select?" So the potential user does a feature comparison of all available plans and the associated mental math. We save potential customers a lot of mental time and trouble by saying "All our plans include all features". So a 'Free' user has ALL the features that an 'Enterprise' user has. Only the usage amount varies.
All Prices Mentioned Upfront. The next question that comes up when signing up for a subscription is, "How much will i be spending?" Most companies list prices for all plans except the Top/Enterprise Plan which just has a 'Contact Us' button. This creates some uneasiness, "Will i be ransomed into this product/service if i start to grow?" We avoid this situation by listing the price for our 'Extra Large' plan (which is our unlimited top end Enterprise plan).
Free Plan - No Credit Card Needed. This is something many do. Nothing different about us here.
Refunds. - All refunds are prorated and processed automatically. For example, if a user signs up for the 'Medium Plan ($150)' on 1st and cancels on 15th, they are immediately issued a refund of $75. We do have a refund policy to prevent plan abuse and protect our platform.
Subscription Cancellations. - Don’t bury the cancel subscription button. If a customer wants to exit - they will. We placed a large and prominent TrashBin icon below the pricing plans. In our case, simply switching back to the 'Free Plan' will stop customer billing immediately.
Data Retention. - A customer may no longer need a paid subscription plan but may need historical data generated when they were on a paid plan. As mentioned earlier, simply switching back to our 'Free Plan' will stop customer billing immediately but they will not lose any old data that was generated.
Easy Upgrade/Downgrade Plans. - All available plans are shown in Billing Dashboard. When user selects any plan, a popup is presented which shows the amount that will be billed, the card it will be billed to, and some important billing support information. A plan can be changed in two clicks.
Easy Add/Remove Credit Cards. - The top-right of the Billing Dashboard has a 'My Cards' button. Clicking it will open a popup where user can add/delete credit cards and set default card.
Payment History. - Full historical table with invoice download options. Also shows date and time of billing.
Total Cost Calculator. - Given the unique nature of our product (i.e. in addition to Send With SES charges, end user may incur extra charges in their AWS Account), we made a Total Cost Calculator that is linked to from the pricing page.
Customer Communication. - We keep customer communications to a bare minimum. The only automated emails we send out are a one-time welcome email on registration, an upcoming payment email, and an invoice-receipt email after payment is made.

Concluding ...

Is our approach working? Probably yes. Since launch (Jan-2018) we have received only one billing related support query.

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About Send With SES.

Send With SES is a wrapper built around AWS for sending Emails, SMS, and Push Notifications (coming soon) to your customers at low cost while ensuring high deliverability.

You can consider Send With SES as an alternative to AWS Pinpoint. Unlimited Contacts/Subscribers. Scale to billions of messages. Just sign in to get started with the Free Plan. No credit card needed.
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