cc.dev
Web and SaaS
email marketing platform
SHOW HN2023
302points
101comments
#145of 3,109 in 2023
Top 5%of 2023 by points
How HN took it
DebatedReal support and real criticism
17 positive, 22 neutral or asking, 3 mixed, 25 critical, out of 67 comments about the project. Thread score -0.01.
Idea: 7 for, 10 againstPrivacy: 2 for, 11 againstPricing: 3 for, 2 againstDesign: 3 for, 0 againstExecution: 0 for, 2 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Cheaper than MailChimp; clear niche for engineers
From 3 comments
Bravo. You found a market niche! Engineers who want to set up basic email marketing for their side project or startup already using ses for login/signup and other user flows.…
lxe on HNI really like this. I'm an engineer, and have had to build basic versions of this internally at a previous company, and we never managed the investment to make it work nicely.…
danpalmer on HNgreat work! Useful option!! 250,000 emails at $44/mo (including SES fee). Currently paying $25 to send 250,000 emails with sendy.co for years. Also using Amazon SES. no monthly…
addajones on HN
Landing page is clean and well designed
From 2 comments
Just wanted to say the landing page is excellent. I love the 1-2-3-4 steps with instructions and screenshots. It shows how easy it is to set up and avoids the classic marketing…
bbx on HNHomepage is beautiful. Product is clear. Very nice.
nickstinemates on HN
Objections
Exposing a database to a third-party service is a security risk
From 3 comments
I see a lot of security concerns with this. Many, if not all databases are not public accessible, nor should they ever be. Asking people to open their database up to you, sketchy…
CableNinja on HNMajor problem with this is that your customers should ideally never expose their databases for public access.
sakopov on HNHaving your database exposed on the public internet so a third party service like this can read it directly is a very bad idea IMO. I get what your going for but the end here is…
zxcvbn4038 on HN
Little advantage over existing SES setup and own codebase
From 2 comments
This feels like a very small step up from just doing everything in my codebase. My SES is already setup. I have templating for emails already. I can query my DB using my ORM…
tansan on HNIf I have SES and MJML and the SQL query - why not just run this on my app server? Why pay you to hit the SES API with my markup? I don't quite get it.
sergiotapia on HN
Lacks double opt-in and unsubscribe handling
From 1 comment
the biggest challenge to fix is the double opt-in and opt-outs. CANSPAM and lots of other regulations make it tricky to not do this well. And if u start getting marked as spam,…
sandGorgon on HN
Requests
Self-hosted or open source option
From 3 comments
I, for the record, find this pretty interesting and am exactly in the target audience for this (down to the cubing part. Maybe I'll see you at a WCA comp sometime). I might check…
xmprt on HNI really like this. I'm an engineer, and have had to build basic versions of this internally at a previous company, and we never managed the investment to make it work nicely.…
danpalmer on HNCongrats on the launch! Lots of really good stuff going on here, a few bits of feedback, ideas, etc, and also responding to some of the comments in other threads. * The quick…
addisonj on HN
Support for other email backends and free sending via MailChannels
From 1 comment
If you send through Cloudflare Workers using MailChannels, the sending is free with no cap.
ttul on HN
Free trial or cheaper small-volume plans
From 2 comments
Honestly, you might be in the small part of SaaS well positioned to offer free trials. Since it’s not your SES, why not let someone try it for a month or two then charge? During…
edmundsauto on HNBravo. You found a market niche! Engineers who want to set up basic email marketing for their side project or startup already using ses for login/signup and other user flows.…
lxe on HN
Liquid template support and better template editor
From 2 comments
the biggest challenge to fix is the double opt-in and opt-outs. CANSPAM and lots of other regulations make it tricky to not do this well. And if u start getting marked as spam,…
sandGorgon on HNThe killer feature of Mailchimp for me is templates. Make the editor great and I would move over quickly.
RyanShook on HN
Questions
How does the database connection work and does an agent run in the VPC
From 2 comments
How does this connect to the database? Does an agent have to run within your VPC?
doylemark on HNCongrats on the launch! Lots of really good stuff going on here, a few bits of feedback, ideas, etc, and also responding to some of the comments in other threads. * The quick…
addisonj on HN
What tracking is provided, such as opens and clicks
From 2 comments
What type of tracking does it provide? Open tracking and split-tests and stats would be essential for this to stand on a more solid group beyond hacking own scripts
kundi on HNThis looks great! Sounds like you track events like opens, clicks SES features.. does that mean you need a specific table in my database? What data about my users would be stored…
tln on HN
How is sender reputation managed
From 1 comment
How do you manage reputation?
neom on HN
Alternatives named
Sendy
From 2 comments
Sendy (https://sendy.co/) ticks all those boxes, plus it is self-hosted, so I don't need to share my database with anyone.
deepspace on HNgreat work! Useful option!! 250,000 emails at $44/mo (including SES fee). Currently paying $25 to send 250,000 emails with sendy.co for years. Also using Amazon SES. no monthly…
addajones on HN
Listmonk
From 2 comments
This looks like an interesting take on email marketing. I use an open source solution called Listmonk (w/ Amazon SES) for my emailing needs. How does this project compare?
elliotkillick on HNfwiw I've been looking to find a MailChimp or such alternative that's FOSS. I've both tried ListMonk and Bespoke but both lack on features I might need. Might just roll my own at…
tough on HN
Mailcoach
From 1 comment
Or Mailcoach (https://mailcoach.app) self-hosted if you appreciate a more modern codebase
Rias on HN
Brevo or Mailjet
From 1 comment
> With over 40k users, sending even a single campaign was becoming expensive with MailChimp. You could always move to Brevo (formerly sendinblue) or Mailjet, it'd be cheap. If…
KomoD on HN