Sparkpost Service, Piece of Worthless Manure

[David..]

8 minutes ago, The Old Man said:

That's what Hillary said to the FBI! 

Too soon?

 

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Sorry I love Hillary but couldn't resist!

 

 

Oops! I hope they don't find the nudes I keep sending! 

[Charles]

Version 4.1.18 will use the queue system to send bulk emails. The queue system has logic to detect how many it can send per loop automatically.

[Rheddy]

Let me be the first person to thank you for that bit of information, Charles. That will come as relief to those of us who prefer using the default and very internal bulk mail system. When I made the leap to IPS Community Suite 4, something I was forced to do because of security issues with IPS 3.4.6, I didn't end up upgrading until after the 4.1.x series was released. Then, I noticed the change in the bulk mail system and I was under the impression that Sparkpost was the new default. I didn't notice the lack of the bulk mail system queue until I ran into difficulties with my webhost provider, something that I try very hard to avoid. It will be nice to see the queue system returned to the IPS bulk mail service. I prefer IPS' system for bulk mail rather than these third party systems. Those services are great if you have 100,000+ users with your community.

Far as 'cycles' go, as liquidfractal asked, they refer to how many emails sent per hour.

[LiquidFractal]

23 hours ago, Charles said:

The queue system has logic to detect how many it can send per loop automatically.

Yes, thanks for this info Charles.  However, and pardon my n00bishness with this, but will this be manually configurable nonetheless?  I have my own VPS and my providers are great, but I'm going to ask them if they have any limits as to bulk emailing just to make sure they don't choke my account.  My site is small right now, but like everyone else I'd still like to send as many emails as possible as quickly as possible.

I guess another way to phrase my concern is: does the logic of this queue system measure accepted web protocols for emails/min or something?

[LiquidFractal]

Just apropos of my last reply: although spam blacklists are obviously an outside resource, my VPS provider says that anything below ~300 emails/hour is perfectly fine.  This is far, far more than I need, so being able to manually set the cycle to, say, 100 emails/hour would be great!

[Ohio Guns]

Any chance of getting some Sendy.co support built in.

[Rheddy]

Have you tried creating a separate topic asking for that one to be added? Generally speaking, in topics like this one talking about something else, suggestions for other items tend to get overlooked. But, I can assure you that when someone posts a new topic asking for a feature or an addition to the IPS service, they do look at your suggestion and take it into advisement. I know that some suggestions that I've come up with have been considered by IPS in the past. IPS kind of frowns on using a single topic for suggestions to new features.

The problems with Sparkpost were because a previous third party service was shutting down and that IPS chose to go with SparkPost. Unfortunately, SparkPost has been detrimental to IPS clients and their service is basically automated. IPS got its own SparkPost account terminated, I experienced the same problem and more than likely, a lot of other IPS clients. It's hard to find a service that doesn't have its share of problems, which is why I preferred IPS' built in default bulk system system. The only thing I have to worry about is getting flagged by my webhost for sending too many bulk mail messages. LOLS

[ptprog]

On 11/28/2016 at 9:23 AM, Kjell Iver Johansen said:

I see that Sendgrid is not free - and that Mandrill actually is a cheaper solution than Sendgrid. I might be missing something.

If you signup for a SendGrid account through Azure or SoftLayer you get 25000 email/month for free.  You can also get 12000 emails/month for free if you signup directly in SendGrid.

I've used both Sendgrid and Sparkpost, and Sendgrid seems to be much more reliable than Sparkpost.

[opentype]

7 hours ago, ptprog said:

You can also get 12000 emails/month for free if you signup directly in SendGrid.

That link only points to the regular 30-days trial version. I am not seeing anything that would confirm the 12,000 free emails per month. 

[ptprog]

5 hours ago, opentype said:

That link only points to the regular 30-days trial version. I am not seeing anything that would confirm the 12,000 free emails per month. 

Weird... depending on the browser I use I get different info on the page I linked (either 40000 emails free for 30 days trial, or 12000 emails free per month).

Anyways, this is what I can see with Safari (probably it is some language setting that makes the page change, not the browser itself):

Here and here you also have additional info about their free plan.  I'm not using that free plan, so I cannot really confirm that you get the 12000 emails/month free, but I can confirm the 25000 emails/month for free offered when you signup through SoftLayer.

[Rheddy]

I think some of these services offer the 12,000 free emails per month but that you have to be a paid subscriber to their service, which kind of defeats the "free 12,000 monthly emails". Either it's free or it isn't. If it's free to paid members, then its really not free.