dirtydanQ: Hi Ian, I love the effort you're putting into your responses here, and in the detailed documentation that ...
you've added loads to over the last few days., so kudos on the massive amount of effort you're putting in and good luck with sales.
I know this has been asked and answered in other forms, but I'm still trying to work out if I can go for it and get everything up and running on my own.
I was in the process of looking for an alternative to Mailchimp for my company, as they were paying a crazy amount every month. I've cut the cost in half and have a shortlist of decent alternatives, and then you come along and throw a spanner in the works!
The Racknerd deal looks great for now, so that's one cost minimised for year one. If can't use your MTA, would the only ongoing be the price of the MTA (Mailgun, Amazon SES etc) each month? And is Amazon SES a pay-as-you-go option based on use?
And would using your Velocity basically leave me with no ongoing costs? (Apart from the server, which is covered anyway for year 1?)
I'm wondering if I can pay a freelancer to sort Velocity MTA properly but am I right in thinking I'd then need to 'warm up' the server?
My use case would initially be one main company (my employer) with a list of 15-25k customers. I could use the service for a few smaller businesses within the group of companies eventually and look at allowing external accounts later if needed. I'll have to charge my company a fee and work out a way for it not to be sketchy, but my main priority is to save them hundreds each month and make my own job easier, with a system I can manage in-house.
Apologies for the basic questions that I know you have covered most of, I'm just trying to get an understanding of the costs I'll be left with if I were to leave my company and keep the service running. In my head, going with a low-cost MTA with prices based on monthly usage would stop me from running up a bill for something not in use.
Finally, if you were to disappear or fold the company, would the software run fine forever without needing updates, or is it something an external developer could work and improve?
Ian_EmailDelivery
Jun 27, 2024A: Hey Dan,
Sorry I haven't had a chance to get to your question yet.
The only 'total cost of ownership' directly related to our product is the lifetime license, $35/year for the Racknerd VPS (no price increase for the second year), and your domain you want to send email from, for instance thedirtydanreport.com.
Amazon SES is pay-as-you-go with no minimums or commit, 10 cents per thousand messages sent, which means if you sent 1 million messages over time it would cost you $100 total.
You most likely don't want to contemplate Velocity MTA until you become an expert, but Racknerd charges $15/year per IP.
You would need to warm up any IPs used for the MTA, and you would be the only one responsible for their sender reputation, it's better to start off using something like Amazon SES to just start sending, and then experiment with warming up your own IPs later.
Warming up a list with 25K contacts on your own IPs is a low bar if you're sending wanted mail, so it shouldn't be an issue once you're ready for that, I wrote about this more in-depth here:
https://docs.emaildelivery.com/docs/reply-to-elmejor
If I got hit in the forehead with a nuke, the software would continue to run fine for the foreseeable future, 5 years from now you would still be able to use it with compatible versions of Docker and Linux. In the terminator end of the world solar flare mad max fury road star trek gladiator planet baby space ship captain darth vader deathstar galactus earth swallower scenario you're talking about someone somewhere would keep it alive, the ROI and quality is way too high, this is not the type of software that just gets thrown away or becomes abandonware. Of all the anxieties I have about our business that's the lowest on the ladder of concerns.