Replace Sendgrid with AWS Simple Email Service

[jonodrew]

Why this?

1. We currently use Sendgrid to send emails to members
2. This costs us 5 cents an hour, up to a maximum of $34.95 per month
3. AWS's Simple Email Service charges 10 cents per 1,000 messages

Why now?

1. We want to save money where we can
2. AWS has a Ruby SDK
3. We already have an AWS account from Aws s3 #2235

[till]

1. How many messages do we send in a month currently?
2. Is there any viable alternative that is available on the Heroku marketplace?

[jonodrew]

On the first - that's a good question. It varies month-on-month, but even our largest month - 23k emails in February - would cost less than $5.

Mailgun might be an alternative, at $19 per month for 50k emails. We could also downgrade our Sendgrid usage to a similar level - $19.950 per month, for 50k emails

All of these are still slightly pricier than the AWS approach. A simpler approach might be just to go for the lower Sendgrid plan, but I think SES will result in lower costs over the longer term

[till]

Thank you!

I think my only with AWS is the access. So people who work on the website can look at it when they have to. That's why I am leaning towards a Heroku add-on — all ACL is settled there when you have access to the Heroku apps.

[olleolleolle]

We may differ between two classes of emails:

• Transactional emails (signup. etc)
• Campaign emails ("Don't miss our Halloween special!")

[jonodrew]

I'm not sure I understand the connection to this proposal - could you expand a bit?

[till]

I think since we don't have accounts and send emails for confirmation, password recovery etc. flows, we don't have transactional emails.

[matyikriszta]

@till we do have what I would consider transactional emails. I consider our workshop invitation, reminder, workshop feedback emails transactional. We currently use Sendgrid to send these. We also have a newsletter, which is a campaign/marketing email that goes out to a separate mailing list. We use Flodesk to manage the list and send these emails.

[mroderick]

2. This costs us 5 cents an hour, up to a maximum of $34.95 per month

The Heroku UI is misleading on this one. It costs $34.95 every month, no matter if we send 18k or 54k emails. I verified it be checking the actual bills we've paid.

[till]

so it's a flat rate essentially?