Ask HN: What services do you use to send email for small scale apps?

[fvargas]

Services like Sendgrid and Mailgun offer free tiers up to a certain number of emails sent per month (about 10k). But beyond the free allotment, the cost of sending emails begins to add up, especially when running an app that doesn't generate revenue.

How does the use of these, or similar, email services compare to using Gmail or Fastmail's SMTP servers to send all your app's emails, assuming they're mostly transactional?

What other options do you recommend for sending transactional emails at small scale (0 - 50k / month)?

[orliesaurus]

Amazon's email service is extremely cheap [1]. I don't think you can go cheaper than them?

https://aws.amazon.com/ses/

[fvargas]

Do you know how SES stacks up against services that focus solely on email?

It looks like a great deal if you already use EC2 because of the free 62k outgoing emails/month. But there doesn't seem to be a free tier otherwise.

[jeremiahstover]

I like MailGun (10k/mo free) - if cost is a significant issue for larger volume why not do the work to send directly from your server?

[fvargas]

Everything I've read about hosting one's own mail servers indicates, other than the educational rewards, it's not a practical idea.

But along those lines, I was considering sending emails using Gmail or Fastmail's servers. I'm unfamiliar with the potential pitfalls, if any, when going this route. I'm hoping someone can comment on that or share their experience.